Small Favors
by Glass Shoe
Summary: A bitter twist of fate reunites the crew


Title: Small Favors Category: Drama/Alternate Universe after DWTB Rating: PG-13 Spoilers: everything through DWTB Summary: A bitter twist of fate reunites the crew. Disclaimers: I don't own Farscape or anything even remotely related to Farscape. Notes: This is a piece that I had to write after seeing DWTB, destined to become AU. I didn't ask for a beta read on this one, so please forgive any glaring grammar or punctuation mistakes. I'm a product of the public education system.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
All of them were crowded into the small, dirty hotel room that the human had been sharing with Chiana, D'argo and Rygel. Space was at a premium on this world. They could have met in a public; the hotel did have a lounge and there were several bars in the vicinity. Under the circumstances, however, they all preferred privacy to comfort.  
  
Crichton and Aeryn sat side-by-side on a low couch against the far wall. Chiana was perched cross-legged on the bed across from them. The rest of them had to stand...or hover in Rygel's case.  
  
They were all on edge. Chiana was twitching and it was hard to miss the fact that D'argo's qualta blade was out of its sheath.  
  
It was very odd, Rygel thought, seeing Crichton and Aeryn so close to each other again. While they were on Moya they had all liked to pretend that the things they did in private stayed private, but with such a small group of...what? Friends? Allies? Nothing could be kept secret for long.  
  
The coin toss.  
  
She'd left him and he'd let her go...but just barely. They all knew what it had cost him to allow that to happen. They'd seen it in his hollow, burning eyes. All that they'd been able to do at the time was offer a few paltry words of comfort. Then they'd muttered their own heart-felt but inadequate good-byes.  
  
Deep down perhaps they knew it wasn't right, that their time together shouldn't end the way it had: in the wake of so much death and destruction. But then again they all had plans of their own, lives of their own, business that had been put off for far too long.  
  
The universe obviously didn't give a flying frell about their plans.  
  
Fate was a cruel, fickle mistress. She did as she damn well pleased, laying traps for them at every turn. First, Chiana's vision of Crichton drifting helpless in Farscape One had caused them to turn back. The untimely breakdown of a faulty component on D'argo's ship had brought them to this world. Plague and the resulting quarantine had kept them here. Then in a final ironic twist Aeryn Sun had found them. She had arrived on the planet tattered, bruised and limping, with John Crichton's name on her lips and a terrible bleakness in her eyes.  
  
She had not come alone.  
  
A scant few arns after she had tracked them down they were all assembled and listening, horrified, to what the ex-Peace-keeper had to say.  
  
When at last Aeryn's husky voice trailed off there was a moment of grim silence as they all absorbed her words. It was Crichton who finally broke the silence by standing up suddenly, his face pale. They all were watching him and he knew it. He made a small gesture that said 'don't touch me' but seemed to add 'please'.  
  
Crichton went into the refresher, what he called a 'bath-room' even though it had no fixtures that could facilitate a bath. It did, however, have a small wash basin as well as a waste funnel. Crichton made use of both. They all pretended not to hear as the human emptied the contents of his stomach and then ran some water to clean himself up. He emerged from the refresher with a few clear droplets still clinging to his chin.  
  
Rygel didn't blame the human. Crichton had been very ill these past few weekens. They all had. Karatonga plague. Nasty frelling sickness. Even the slightest movement was nauseating. He, Crichton, D'argo and Chiana had spent most of the last monen with their heads either in a bucket or in the waste funnel. 'Praying to the Porcelain God' Crichton had called it. As far as Rygel had been concerned he could pray to whatever deity he liked if it would help to cure them. When they weren't heaving their guts out they were doing things that were just as unfit to discuss in polite conversation.  
  
If it hadn't been for the quarantine on this part of the planet Aeryn would never have caught up to them. Every medical facility was filled to bursting with the critically ill. Fortunately the four of them had contracted one of the less virulent strains. They had been closeted in this hotel with hundreds of other infected. A single Diagnosan had been assigned to patrol the entire building, but even he couldn't say why Crichton was taking longer to recover than the rest of them had. At first Rygel had put it down to Crichton's being an irritating and inferior species. Then he realized: Aeryn was gone, Moya was gone, the rest of them were still planning to go their own separate ways as soon as the quarantine was lifted and Crichton feared that if he returned to his home-world the Peace-keepers would follow. The human simply had no reason to get better, though the Hynerian Gods knew Chiana had tried to give him one. D'argo had struggled to hide his displeasure when he saw what she was doing. He hadn't entirely succeeded. Not that it mattered, as Crichton had gently turned aside her advances.  
  
Crichton was swaying on his feet like grass in a breeze. D'argo handed his qualta blade to Chiana and edged forward, ready to catch the human if he passed out. Crichton saw the gesture and waved him off, leaning against the cracked wall outside the refresher. He tried to be casual about it, folding his arms across his chest, but Rygel suspected that the wall was the only thing holding him up.  
  
"Could you...uh...give us a minute to talk?" Crichton asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose, a gesture that let him to hide his eyes. "Privately?"  
  
D'argo gave a low, disapproving growl. He spared an angry scowl for Aeryn, which the ex-Peace-keeper ignored. Chiana shifted her weight nervously and searched her friends' faces, apparently gauging everyone's reaction before making her move.  
  
It was Rygel who broke the silence. He looked pointedly at D'argo and Chiana, "I think we could all use a drink. Don't you agree?"  
  
"Thanks, Sparky."  
  
Rygel sniffed. He still hated the names that Crichton had invented for him. He was a Dominar, a sovereign, not some de-clawed Jenubian foncet cub. But in the back of his mind he wondered idly when Crichton's nick-names had lost their sting.  
  
Rygel hovered near the door and ushered the Luxan and the Nebari into the hall. He was about to follow them when he heard Crichton say, "You too, Aeryn."  
  
Rygel thought Aeryn would refuse. She said not a word, only stared at the human. Crichton refused to look at her and she nodded, accepting her punishment. She stood with military precision despite her limp and followed D'argo and Chiana.  
  
Rygel prided himself on being observant, a skill that he had worked hard to develop since his cousin Bishan had stolen his throne right out from under him. So he noticed that although Aeryn had reached out to Crichton several times, he would not allow her to touch him.  
  
Crichton didn't trust her.  
  
Rygel could hardly blame him for that either.  
  
"Half an arn," Rygel said loudly. He hovered near Crichton, placing a small green appendage on the human's pasty white arm to get his attention. In a quieter voice, "Com us if you need us...and stay the frell out of trouble."  
  
He wasn't quiet enough. On the other side of the room the only remaining person lifted his cadaverous face and speared him with a look. When Scorpius spoke, his tone was as calm and smooth as ever, "There is no need for concern, Dominar Rygel...or profanity. You have already seen that I pose no threat...to any of you."  
  
Frell. Wherever the hybrid hid his ears, they were sharp.  
  
"The day you pose no threat to any of us is the day your stinking corpse is cold to the touch. Watch yourself, butcher," Rygel warned. Scorpius gave him an ingratiating smile that showed off his bad teeth. "You do the same," Rygel whispered solemnly to Crichton.  
  
"Hmm," the human responded without looking up.  
  
Rygel realized that it was as close to an affirmative as he was going to get. Reluctantly he followed the others, leaving Crichton alone with the hybrid.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Crichton closed the door and leaned with his back against it. He hadn't thought the day would ever come when he would choose to be alone in a room with Scorpius over Aeryn.  
  
She kept finding new ways to wound him. Back on Moya he had been thumbing his nose at fate again. Every time he did that she slapped him around. Maybe someday he'd learn.  
  
It had been a small device, no bigger than the palm of his hand, a scaled- down version of the Peace-keeper tracking device that they had removed from Moya over two cycles ago. Just slide it under the console in Aeryn's prowler and he'd know exactly where she was headed.  
  
Screw the coin toss. He wasn't a graceful loser.  
  
*I can't let the only thing I love fly away in a crappy little ship.*  
  
He hadn't asked her permission so much as told her that he was going to fly with her...for as long as his fuel would last. So he puttered alongside her in his module like a kid on a bike trying to keep pace with a pretty girl in a red-and-black Firebird. There was either too much or too little to say because neither of them spoke. When he reached the end of his fuel supply he let Aeryn know that this was as far as he went. He was surprised when she wheeled her prowler slowly around to look at him. As she drew closer he could see that she was holding something up to the glass.  
  
The tracking device.  
  
Deactivated.  
  
Finally the tech in her decided to show herself.  
  
Somewhere Gilina Renaez was grinning.  
  
He'd kept his eyes on the nose of his craft, face burning. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aeryn as she lowered the device and regarded him. Gently.  
  
*We're in the hands of fate now.*  
  
And then she gave him what he wanted.  
  
*Goodbye, John Crichton.*  
  
He wasn't watching when she finally powered up her engines and left him. In his memory she and her prowler simply faded away to nothing.  
  
Darkness. Moya...swallowed...  
  
Why the hell did Chiana's visions *always* have to come true?  
  
Just like that he was alone again, nowhere near a populated planet, low on fuel and lower on O2. He almost wished that it had ended there. A peaceful, easy death with his friends' kind words still fresh in his ears. All he had to do was close his eyes and sleep. He'd been so very tired for so long...  
  
He looked across the small room at Scorpius, wanting to be angry with the half-breed, but all he felt was empty. He'd used up everything he had on Aeryn.  
  
Rygel had been cryptic. He hadn't warned any of them what to expect when he'd told them to come down to the hotel's lobby. He'd said only that D'argo should bring his qualta blade. Lo and behold, there she'd been...with Scorpius at her elbow like some long-lost college dorm buddy.  
  
While he'd been ill there had been too much time for him to think, to wonder why she didn't trust him enough to tell him about the baby, to replay her removing the tracking device from her prowler so that he couldn't find her. When she had arrived on the planet with Scorpius in tow Crichton had assumed the worst. Horrible and irrational as it seemed, he thought she'd sold him out. He was hurt, angry, sick and tired of everyone he trusted always trying to screw him over.  
  
He had snapped like a dry twig.  
  
Crichton didn't remember half of what he'd said and it was probably better that way. He did remember his friends' stunned silence, the half-dead look in Aeryn's eyes when he finally ran out of breath.  
  
Her hand on his arm.  
  
He'd pulled away from her touch as if it burned. Then there had been soft words asking if they could take this conversation somewhere private. He still wasn't sure who had spoken them.  
  
As things turned out, the reality wasn't far off his original assumption.  
  
He was brought him back to the present by the creak of leather. Scorpius was calmly folding himself into Aeryn's recently vacated seat. He was studying the human like he was planning to paint Crichton's portrait.  
  
Crichton was chagrined that he had lost his lunch in front of Scorpius, but he hadn't been able to help it. Now his stomach muscles were starting to cramp and all he really wanted was to sit down and put his head between his knees until sometime tomorrow. Well, his stomach could complain all it liked because he wasn't sitting, not with Bram Stoker's muse in front of him and only a flimsy wall at his back for security.  
  
His throat was sore, "You win, Scorpy," Crichton said, "Talk."  
  
"John," The hybrid dropped the saccharin tone he'd used with Rygel. His words were even and sincere, "I have never mislead you about my intentions. The Scarrans are no imaginary threat. Commandant Grayza's attempt to show strength by uniting the Uncharted Territories is a useless endeavor. Her plans to bargain with the Scarrans are even more foolish." He paused as if waiting for Crichton to say something. When the human did not respond he continued, "On the command carrier I told you that our fates were linked. Surely you can see that that statement is more true now than it ever was before."  
  
A chill crept up Crichton's spine. It took all of his self-control not to let the hybrid see him shiver. "She didn't tell me everything, did she?"  
  
Scorpius studied Crichton before answering. "I suspect that she was trying to spare you."  
  
"Did they...um..." Crichton was irritated that his voice would not work properly.  
  
"No," Scorpius answered quickly.  
  
Crichton let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. His knees were shaky with relief.  
  
The half-Scarran continued, "But I believe that Officer Sun's judgement was correct. I think you would react...badly...if you knew everything that has happened."  
  
Badly? He'd already tossed his cookies. He wasn't strong enough to put his fist through a wall. He wanted to believe he was still too healthy to go into cardiac arrest.  
  
Mild touch of hysteria. "No worries, Grasshopper. Nothing left to throw up." Laughing hurt, he found.  
  
"As you wish," Scorpius conceded.  
  
Maybe it was just Crichton's imagination but he thought Scorpy gave him a moment to brace himself before he began. Funny, that made him the first person on this side of the galaxy to willingly accommodate his human weakness.  
  
"I ran afoul of a Scarran long-range patrol vessel after I made my escape from the command carrier. The Scarrans were most...eager...to receive me."  
  
"The prodigal son returns. I'll bet they were thrilled to pick your brain."  
  
"Indeed...Scarran methods of interrogation are quite...innovative."  
  
John Crichton closed his eyes.  
  
D. K. with his wrists slashed.  
  
Aeryn and Chiana on the dance floor, writhing around him like snakes.  
  
His dying mother hovering over him: *Be with me when I go...*  
  
When he opened his eyes he saw Scorpius regarding him, his expression unreadable. The half-breed did not otherwise acknowledge the human's lapse in concentration. He continued, "Fortunately my half-Scarran physiology gave me a unique advantage. I was able to withstand their initial interrogation. I was isolated in one of their laboratories, one that they save for prisoners who are of...special interest. They were preparing to ship me to one of the Scarran core worlds for a full...debriefing...when I discovered that I was not the only Peace-keeper captive in the lab."  
  
Aeryn's husky voice echoed in the back of Crichton's mind, *It was a long way between worlds. I had to put the prowler on autopilot so that I could rest. I was sleeping when the Scarrans netted my ship.*  
  
It was suddenly very cold in the small room. Crichton's duster was lying on the couch about a foot from Scorpy.  
  
The human folded his arms and stayed where he was.  
  
Scorpius was still speaking, "At the time I did not realize the identity of my fellow prisoner. I only knew from her screams that she was female."  
  
*The Scarrans questioned me.*  
  
"They did not use their standard method of interrogation." That was where the bruises and the limp came from. "She held out for a very long time."  
  
*I told them that I didn't know anything.*  
  
"I was curious why they kept her alive and why they did not rape her."  
  
*They said that I had something they wanted.*  
  
"Then I realized-"  
  
*-what they meant.*  
  
The echo of Aeryn's trembling sigh, then the sound of a heavy breath being drawn.  
  
"With each new race the Scarrans encounter, they conduct experiments to determine whether or not the species might be of value to them. You are aware of the circumstances that led to my own...conception. By cross- breeding a Scarran with a Sebacean they hoped to uncover genetic traits that would give them a military advantage."  
  
Crichton's heart was hammering in his chest.  
  
*They took the child.*  
  
Scorpius' voice was velvet, fascinated, "...a human/Sebacean hybrid; the first in existence. It was an opportunity for study that the Scarrans could not pass up."  
  
He should have been offended by the scientific curiosity in Scorpy's tone, but his thoughts were running in a different direction.  
  
"Did they kill...it?" The question was a difficult one to ask. Even more difficult was waiting for a reply.  
  
Scorpius shook his head, "I doubt that the Scarrans would destroy such a unique commodity outright. I believe that the child was still alive when Officer Sun and I escaped. The Scarrans had moved it to a more secure location." Scorpy went silent until Crichton looked up to see why the half- Scarran had stopped talking. When their eyes locked, Scorpius continued, "Officer Sun was quite...distraught...at the idea of leaving her child behind."  
  
Of course she was.  
  
And she knew that Crichton would be too. Not John. Crichton.  
  
Scorpius was like an educational video, "The Scarrans will likely incubate the fetus until its natural gestation cycle is complete. After that they may raise your child as breeding stock. Or, if they are unwilling to wait that long, they may dissect it."  
  
His child. Breeding stock. Dissection.  
  
Scorpius, "Our window of opportunity is limited, John."  
  
Oh God, here it comes.  
  
"If the Scarrans move out of this system they will be difficult to track. As you have no doubt surmised, my...affiliation with the Peace-keepers is in flux at the moment. However, as you saw from my vault at the Shadow Depository I am not without...alternative means. I have a considerable amount of wealth...and allies...which can be reached and dispatched within a matter of arns."  
  
Crichton wasn't feeling much of anything, but his words came out ironic, "Was that the sales pitch?"  
  
He didn't realize that he'd slid into a sitting position on the floor until Scorpius began to advance. Hastily he began to scramble to his feet, knowing that he didn't have the speed or strength to mount a defense if the hybrid attacked him. Scorpius didn't attack, though. The hybrid planted his gloved hands flat against the wall on either side of the human, effectively trapping him. When he spoke again his breath was hot and foul on Crichton's face, "John Crichton, you have destroyed my Gammak base, my command carrier, every scrap of wormhole research that I have worked so hard to procure. All that remains is what is locked inside your brain." His sharp gaze traveled up Crichton's left arm, taking in the inked-in equations, both faded and fresh. Goose bumps underneath. "Give me wormholes, and I will help you get your child back. Give me wormholes, and we will eliminate the Scarran threat forever."  
  
It was his child in every way that counted. Aeryn had realized that, but only when it was convenient for her. Strange how the people you loved the most always knew the best ways to hurt you. He'd sell his soul for his child. Aeryn knew that. And that was exactly what she expected him to do. That was why she'd led Scorpius to him.  
  
Did he have a choice? Of course. There were always choices. He'd just stopped knowing what the right ones were a long time ago.  
  
"The Scarrans have your child, John. I offer you an alliance that will be mutually beneficial. What do you intend to do?"  
  
The half-breed still had him trapped against the wall. He rolled his head to the side, avoiding Scorpy's piercing eyes. He was tired of answering the same question twice.  
  
"I already told you, Scorpy. You win."  
  
He wondered if the devil wanted a bill of sale.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Aeryn drank with a purpose.  
  
It was easy to slip back into the routine that her days on Valldon had made so familiar to her. The raslac burned painfully on its way down and she felt no pleasure as the hot liquid pooled in her belly. The numbness in her fingers was from the alcohol. The trembling was not. Holding the bottle tight was the only thing that kept her hand steady.  
  
Touch.  
  
Ghostly hands on her shoulders, massaging the tension away. Her name on an exhaled breath that was as cold as deep space...  
  
Straddling Crais in the filthy hallway outside her room on Valldon, *If I squeeze my eyes closed tightly enough, you could almost be someone else...*  
  
Scorpius pressing his body against hers, holding her shaking form still as they hid from a passing Scarran patrol...  
  
The constant need for physical contact was an alien concept to her, but not to John. Touch was an addiction, something he'd taught her to crave as much as he did. Now that he was gone she found herself having to re-adjust to a universe where physical contact was inappropriate and unwanted.  
  
Crichton in the hotel's lobby, recoiling from the imploring weight of her hand on his arm...  
  
Aeryn set her drink down. The intoxicants that she'd consumed were starting to make a number of unwanted feelings available to her.  
  
She explored the bar with disinterested eyes. Aliens everywhere. Rygel and Chiana hunched over their drinks, as far away as they could get and still keep her in their sight. Every once in a while one of them would glance over at her while they whispered back and forth to each other. As if she could even hear them at this distance and over all the noise.  
  
She was caught off-guard as something landed with a loud metallic clatter on the scratched surface of the bar. She managed not to jump in surprise, due largely to the amount of alcohol in her system. She cursed herself silently for letting her mind wander.  
  
D'argo was looming behind her. "I found this in Crichton's module."  
  
She didn't need to look down to know what it was: modified Padak beacon, still blinking dutifully away. Crichton had installed one just like it on her prowler. She had assumed that he would have its -mate, twin- match on his module and she'd been right.  
  
It had been easy to reconfigure the components in the device from sending a signal to tracing one. Still, she'd needed Scorpius' help to do it. Her hands had been shaking too badly at the time to hold the delicate wires.  
  
Four solar days later and they were still shaking.  
  
"I had been wondering how you found us," the Luxan's voice was low and rumbling, not quite a threat but at least a warning.  
  
"Now you can stop wondering," she informed him.  
  
"Does it broadcast to the Peace-keepers?"  
  
"No. Isolated frequency."  
  
"Shut it off anyway."  
  
The warrior in her wanted to refuse. An order from anyone besides a commanding officer was a challenge. But the tactician in her realized that the quickest way to be rid of the Luxan was to do what he asked.  
  
It took her several tries to twist the device apart and reveal the hidden key-code panel, several more for her fingers to find the right buttons in the right combination. She could feel the Luxan's eyes on her the entire time. When she was done she dropped the deactivated device on the bar and picked up her drink to give her hands something to do.  
  
With her task finished she thought the Luxan would leave her alone. Instead he lowered his tall frame onto a stool beside her and signalled the bartender.  
  
"I don't want company," she told him bluntly.  
  
The Luxan didn't answer and he made no motion to get up. Aeryn would have moved but the truth was her leg was aching abominably. The two bottles of raslac that she'd used to fill her empty stomach had dulled the pain but not erased it. They'd also made her dizzy. If she tried to rise she knew she would only embarrass herself. So Aeryn sat with her back so straight that it hurt. Good. Pain would help keep her focused. She kept her eyes locked on the row of colorful bottles behind the bar, watching their outlines blur.  
  
For a while neither of them spoke.  
  
The Luxan's drink arrived, a shallow bowl of a vaguely brownish liquid. He covered the bowl with one hand and slammed it against the bar with the other, sloshing a little over the side. He drained the bowl in two swallows and pushed it away from himself. When at last he spoke, the words came slowly. "I have not admitted this to anyone besides Chiana...but at the slave auction...when I discovered that Scorpius had captured my son...I found myself prepared to hand Crichton over to Scorpius. It was all I could do to stop myself."  
  
Aeryn didn't look at him, didn't so much as twitch in response. She could see his reflection on the surface of the bar, compassion in his alien eyes.  
  
She wanted none of it.  
  
The Luxan continued, "What I am saying is that I understand why you did what you did. I know the pain of losing a child-"  
  
"You don't know anything," she said quickly.  
  
Scarrans didn't believe in anaesthetics.  
  
Her hand tightened on the bottle until she thought it would crack.  
  
D'argo was quiet for a moment, absorbing her words. She couldn't tell whether or not she had hurt or even offended him until he spoke again, "I said that I understood why you did what you did...I did *not* say that I approved."  
  
"This doesn't involve you. Go. Find Macton. Have your revenge. The quarantine was lifted almost two solar days ago. You can leave whenever you like."  
  
The Luxan gave a disgusted hiss, "You think so little of me...that I would abandon Crichton to Scorpius after all he did to help me save my son."  
  
"This isn't your fight."  
  
"I will not abandon an ally. Scorpius will not let Crichton go even if he refuses to cooperate. You had to have known that when you brought him here."  
  
"Crichton can choose his own path."  
  
D'argo was indignant, "Considering what is at stake, do you think that Crichton would choose anything other than to pay the price that Scorpius is asking?"  
  
Aeryn didn't answer. She didn't have to.  
  
"And if Crichton shares wormholes with Scorpius, do you believe that Scorpius will let him go when he is done?" The Luxan hissed bitterly. "You always do what is best for yourself. Not for Crichton. You left Moya without even telling him about the child, a child that is as much his as it was the other Crichton's."  
  
The child gone.  
  
Tears drying on her face.  
  
Her womb still gaping open to the unnaturally hot environment of the Scarran laboratory.  
  
Scorpius could have left her on the dreadnought, but he didn't. The military scientist knew something about medicine, especially Sebacean anatomy. He'd patched her up, released her from her restraints, let her lean on him as they made their escape from the lab: two pathetic creatures, both suffering in the heat of the Scarran vessel, armed only with a med- injector.  
  
Even then she'd known: Scorpius didn't do anything out of the kindness of his heart. Eventually there would be a price to pay and there was only one thing that the half-breed wanted: revenge against the Scarrans.  
  
There was a part of her now that sympathized.  
  
If she had been any other Sebacean, Scorpius would have left her there to rot. But Aeryn Sun and her child were the keys to John Crichton, who was the key to wormholes.  
  
So she'd made a choice, a decision much like the one her own mother had been forced to make: the child or the father.  
  
Xhalax's perfect revenge realized.  
  
She found herself agreeing even before Scorpius had suggested a plan to rescue the child. Just by accepting his help in the first place she'd as good as pledged Crichton to Scorpius. D'argo was right. She'd known that the human would not refuse. As proof she could point to the royal planet, where Crichton had been willing to give up everything: home, friends, family, even her, all for the sake of a child he had never met, conceived with a woman he did not love.  
  
He had been willing to forfeit his life for Katralla's daughter. She knew he would do the same for Aeryn Sun's.  
  
Aeryn pulled herself back to the present. "I don't have to justify my actions to you."  
  
"No," D'argo rumbled, "but you *should* justify them to John."  
  
Aeryn turned to face the Luxan with blood-shot eyes, "As I said before: you...don't...know...anything."  
  
She turned away but after several microts she could still feel the Luxan staring at her.  
  
"Go away."  
  
Although D'argo didn't look pleased about it, he respected her wishes.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Crichton was alone when he dragged himself into the hotel's lounge. It didn't take his friends long to notice, either.  
  
He saw Aeryn sitting by herself in the far corner. The ex-Peace-keeper was stiff, emotionless and she had a death grip on a bottle of raslac. Although the bar was crowded there was a ring of empty seats around her. It was like she exuded a personal force field designed to keep everyone out. God knew it worked well enough on him.  
  
That was a hill he didn't have the strength to climb right now.  
  
D'argo, Rygel and Chiana had settled themselves close to the bar's entrance. They must have been watching for him because D'argo was talking before he knew they were there.  
  
"You look like dren." the Luxan told him casually. And on the same breath, "Where is Scorpius?"  
  
"Using the hotel's communications array." God, he sounded as tired as he felt.  
  
Rygel and Chiana gave him somber looks without a hint of surprise. They knew him better than he knew himself. Chiana stood and pulled him down into a seat beside her. He collapsed into it gratefully. "You left him by himself?" she asked in disbelief.  
  
Crichton signalled to the bartender who placed two shots of a thick, purplish liquid in front of him. He tossed them back like he was a marathon runner and the drinks were water. They hit his empty stomach like twin bricks and he had to lean over and rest his head against the bar to keep them from coming back up.  
  
"That was stupid..." Chiana commented.  
  
"You mean the booze or the Scorpius thing?" he said into the bar.  
  
"Both."  
  
"I'm already in the oven, Pip. It's just a matter of degrees now." There was a bleakness in his voice that none of his flippant words could erase.  
  
"So what happens now?" D'argo asked softly.  
  
Crichton stood and a few microts later his stomach caught up with him. He leaned his head back, clamping his jaw shut until the liquor reluctantly slid back down his esophagus. "Now there's someone else I have to talk to."  
  
His hand never strayed far from the edge of the bar as he made his way over to Aeryn. Crichton knew that his friends' eyes were on him. He could hear them whispering in voices too low for his deficient human ears to pick up. The only word he caught was "frelled."  
  
Aeryn did not acknowledge him in any way, not even when he slid onto a stool beside her, leaning with his back against the bar, elbows casually propped behind him. He watched the bottle of raslac rise and fall mechanically from her lips.  
  
"It's done," he told her on an exhaled breath.  
  
Aeryn didn't answer, not with words. She paused between sips and dipped her head in what could be interpreted as a nod.  
  
"Scorpy's setting things up. He's gonna let me know..." Hell, she wasn't even listening. And why should she be? None of this was news to her. He didn't realize how much he'd wanted some sort of a reaction out of her until he didn't get one.  
  
"Does it matter, Aeryn?" he asked stiffly.  
  
It took her a moment, but she did turn to look at him. He thought he would pass out when her eyes travelled up to meet his. "What?"  
  
He didn't let his composure slip. "Does it even matter what I say? I mean, you already seem to know all the answers."  
  
She looked at him for a long moment and then turned her attention back to her drink. "I don't want to talk."  
  
"Well, I do." He was fair this time. He gave her a chance to pay him back for his hissy fit in the lobby. He almost wanted her to get up, throw her drink in his face, yell at him, leave, anything. Instead she just sat there. "I want you to tell me..." he began, trying hard to keep his voice in check. "No, I want you to *explain* why you left without telling me about the baby. You didn't trust me? Is that it? I feel like I don't know why you do anything anymore. You're just so-"  
  
"Selfish?" she filled in.  
  
He felt like he'd just stepped in pile of dog shit but was afraid to check his shoe.  
  
"Selfish...like making decisions without consulting anyone?" Now Aeryn's voice was rising. The patrons closest to them started to look uncomfortable. A pair of yellow-skinned aliens with eyes mounted on black stalks who looked stunningly like DRDs come to life chose that moment to make a discreet exit. "Like deliberately putting yourself in situations which you know you cannot handle alone? Like sacrificing yourself over, and over, and over again without considering those you leave behind?"  
  
Larraq and his crew, the Gammak base, the shadow depository, the peace memorial.  
  
Dam Ba Da.  
  
Those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.  
  
Crichton opened his mouth to say something but snapped it shut. It took a few moments for him to regroup. Softly, "Aeryn, why couldn't you have just been honest with me?"  
  
"Would you have let me go?"  
  
"No." It was the one thing he knew for certain.  
  
Aeryn shook her head. "I told you: it was too late."  
  
That raspy whisper in his ear, *...her life...her world...on her time...*  
  
Damned old woman.  
  
"Is it still too late?"  
  
It was hard waiting for the reply. "I don't know."  
  
Crichton waited a beat before asking, "Were you going to get rid of it?" He couldn't look her in the eye, just in case the answer was 'yes'.  
  
But Aeryn was already shaking her head. "How could you think that?"  
  
Crichton shrugged, "Interspecies contamination..."  
  
"Among Peace-keepers, children are taken from their parents and raised communally. I...liked...the idea of raising my child. The baby was the only thing that has ever really belonged to me."  
  
"Us."  
  
She didn't respond. Crichton could have left it at that, but something inside him wanted to press the issue. "Aeryn...am I or am I not the baby's father?"  
  
"As much as anyone ever will be."  
  
Crichton squeezed his eyes shut, pained. "That's not good enough."  
  
"It's all I have for you."  
  
He threw up his hands, "It's your world, Aeryn." No matter how much he knew it might hurt her he couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.  
  
Crichton got up and started to walk away.  
  
"Cri-...John," Aeryn called to him.  
  
He turned. For a long time it looked like she wasn't going to say anything, that she regretted even calling his name.  
  
Then, "I'm sorry."  
  
He took that. It was more than he had yesterday.  
  
Crichton didn't remember drifting back over to D'argo and the others. Whether it was because of the alcohol in his bloodstream or his conversation with Aeryn he couldn't be sure. At this point he wasn't even sure that his legs existed from the knees down. Alcohol, then.  
  
He found himself sitting at a table with Rygel, D'argo and Chiana, explaining what little of Scorpy's plan he knew.  
  
"I don't deliver 'til he does. That's the deal."  
  
Scorpius had wanted to contact some of his associates and have Crichton moved to a 'secure' location. Crichton had told him no dice. No safety deposit box for Momma Crichton's baby boy. He was staying right here.  
  
"And if he doesn't? If Scorpius betrays you?"  
  
"He doesn't need to. He's got me where he wants me." His gaze drifted over to where Aeryn sat. She could see him, but she gave no indication that she knew he was there.  
  
D'argo noticed where Crichton was looking. "You will need someone to watch your back while you wait."  
  
Crichton studied the Luxan for a long moment. "D'argo, I've gotten you guys into enough dren."  
  
"My friend," the Luxan said, "the time has come for me to be completely honest with you: if you haven't noticed, you have a tendency to get yourself into trouble without someone there to pull your eema out of the fire."  
  
D'argo was mock-serious, but Crichton could see the sincerity hiding underneath. "D'argo, don't. It's just giving Scorpy more collateral."  
  
"Then you'll be satisfied to know that I'm not staying," Rygel told him. "It's a long road back to my throne and I've been held up on this miserable planet for too long."  
  
No surprise there.  
  
Chiana wasn't speaking. Crichton knew that she wanted to be saying the same thing. He knew the Nebari resistance was calling her name.  
  
"There's blood on your wrist," Rygel observed casually.  
  
Crichton looked down, at a spot on his arm that had been itching for a while. He'd been scratching it but that had only made the itch worse.  
  
"Huh," he said thoughtfully, looking at the smear of fresh and drying blood. He must have cut himself somewhere. It was a pretty nasty cut, too. The booze must have dulled the pain because he couldn't really feel it.  
  
Crichton stood up to fetch a napkin and nearly fell in Chiana's lap.  
  
"You're intoxicated," D'argo informed him.  
  
"Ka D'argo: Master of the Obvious."  
  
He wasn't just drunk, though. He was drunk and sick. The fever from the Karatonga plague had diminished but never really broken. His face felt hot, his head achy.  
  
"Maybe you should eat something," Rygel suggested.  
  
Crichton tried not to groan. "No, thanks. I don't like it when my supper makes a curtain call."  
  
"Then go sleep," D'argo ordered, not without sympathy.  
  
"Nah, Scorpy's gonna be looking for me. I told him I'd be here." Even before the words were out he knew that in another quarter arn he'd be licking the floor. Maybe he should save himself the embarrassment of being carried back to bed.  
  
Still mindful of his wrist, Crichton tried to reach a stack of napkins from where he was sitting. On the way he knocked Rygel's steaming beverage into D'argo's lap.  
  
"Crichton," D'argo hissed between clenched teeth, "Rygel and I will deal with Scorpius. Go to sleep or I will put you to sleep."  
  
"Well, when you put it that way..."  
  
If Rygel was annoyed at being volunteered, he didn't show it.  
  
Chiana was already wrapping Crichton's arm around her shoulders, lifting him out of his chair. Either the Nebari was a lot stronger than she looked or he'd lost more weight than he'd realized. "Yeah...I'm just gonna..." he indicated the door with his free hand. D'argo made a dismissive gesture, "Go, go." The Luxan was blotting furiously at the stain on his tunic, looking pained as whatever alcoholic beverage meant for Hynerian physiology ate its way down to his skin.  
  
Chiana half-carried him up to the room that they'd been sharing. Thank God it was only a short walk from the level riser. He wanted to mention to Chiana that more rooms were probably available since the planetary quarantine had been lifted. Maybe for once they could each have their own room instead of sleeping in shifts. He decided against it, though. Right now he didn't feel like being alone.  
  
"Crichton," Chiana was saying. "I've seen everything the universe has. You know me..."  
  
"Yeah...kiss, kick or cry yourself out of any situation." He liked Chi. Chi was practical. With her, he always knew where he stood...because she told him. She was safe...and she smelled good too. His head was now resting on her shoulder. He turned a little and buried his nose in her hair. Chi would never slap him away for saying she smelled nice.  
  
"Aeryn..." she said, and Crichton felt his whole body clench. "She's got nothing left for you." Chiana swallowed. "She used it all up on the other guy."  
  
Chiana was street-smart. She had no illusions that life was fair. Because of that she saw truths that other people chose to ignore because they didn't fit their idea of how the universe should operate.  
  
He didn't say anything as Chiana maneuvered around him to open the door to their room. She deposited him on the bed and then went into the refresher and emerged with a wet cloth. By the time she came back was he was already lying down, eyes shut to keep the room from spinning.  
  
They were all broken, but in different ways: physically, mentally, and spiritually. The walking wounded, carrying their phobias, paranoias and disorders around with them in the holster of a pulse pistol, the sheath of a qualta blade. And a small part of him was afraid it might be true, that Aeryn was beyond repair. She'd taken a risk laying everything out for the other guy, only to lose it all. Maybe it was a wound she would never recover from. But John Crichton had a little something that was in short supply throughout the rest of the universe: hope. That and stubborn, unshakeable human optimism. Bruises fade, cuts scar, and time heals all wounds.  
  
The bed dipped slightly under Chiana's weight. Crichton felt her dabbing away the blood on his wrist with the wet, cold cloth. Her voice was soft and halting as she told him, "I meant what I said on Moya, that I would love you to come with me. I think...especially with this whole Scorpius thing...maybe it's not such a bad idea." There was a hint of nervous laughter in her voice, the kind she got when she was explaining something that she was sure you weren't going to like. "I mean, yeah, you look like a Peace-keeper, but anyone who wants to can check and see that you're not even Sebacean..."  
  
"Pip..."  
  
But she rushed ahead, trying to get the words out before he could tell her 'no'. Chiana had her own kind of optimism, even when she knew she was fighting a losing battle. "We could go...We could run away and leave this whole Scorpius thing behind." Her head was beside his on the pillow, her cool forehead touching his hot one, feathery-soft hair brushing his temple. "We could go now."  
  
"Chiana-"  
  
"I don't want you to die." There was something wet on his face. Chiana was crying. "I had a vision. I saw...I saw you get shot by a pulse blast. If you stay on this planet and wait for Scorpius, I think someone is going to kill you."  
  
A chill ran through him that had nothing to do with the fever. Chiana slid her arms reflexively around him. "Please, Crichton. Just...just come with me..."  
  
"Pip...I can't leave."  
  
"Crichton..."  
  
Aeryn with a toddler on her hip, smiling.  
  
Selfish. Wasn't everybody?  
  
Crichton sighed. His hand traveled to touch her hair. "Tomorrow...I'll go to Scorpius...I'll ask him to get me to a safe location."  
  
"But you're still going along with Scorpius' plan. The kid really means that much to you?"  
  
The answer was 'yes', but Crichton fell asleep before he could say it. He woke up several arns later with Chiana's sleeping form curled up beside him and the barrel of a pulse-pistol under his chin.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Crichton stared up the length of the pulse pistol. The person at the other end of the weapon slowly came into focus, spiky hair first.  
  
"Hello, Crichton."  
  
Braca.  
  
Son of a bitch.  
  
Crichton didn't bother with surprise. Waste of time. Already in survival mode, his aching brain processed the information laid out before him.  
  
Harvey had warned Crichton that Scorpius might try to contact the Peace- keepers. And why not? Scorpius had every reason not to trust the human. The last time Crichton had told Scorpy he'd share wormholes he'd blown up the hybrid's command carrier instead.  
  
Oops.  
  
But, no, Crichton had told D'argo not to worry and Harvey to shove it, he was tired, and in more ways than one. Harvey had gone off sulking. Now the neural clone was staying judiciously silent in a corner of Crichton's mind. He didn't like being right any more than Crichton did.  
  
The lieutenant looked cleaned and pressed, like he'd just come back from the dry-cleaners, and he was observing the buddy system. Two PK action- figures were stationed by the door. Probably more in the hall. Peace- keepers weren't familiar with the word 'overkill'.  
  
"On your feet," Braca ordered.  
  
Crichton's thigh was bare. He kept falling asleep with Winona still strapped to his leg, waking up with a huge bruise, so Chiana would take the pulse-pistol off and slide it under the bed. He thought of stalling, seeing if he could get close enough to grab it, but the PK twins edged forward, ready to make Braca's orders reality if Crichton didn't move fast enough.  
  
He felt a small jolt and knew Chiana was awake now. Her gloved fingers dug into his shoulders as he started to sit up. One of the PKs closed the distance between them and jerked her roughly away from him. Pip went, but not quietly. He didn't see the PK toss her against the far wall but he sure as hell heard it: a sick thud followed by the sound of a body crumpling to the ground. She was still conscious, though, because he heard the PK grunt and swear as she bit him. "Nebari tralk," he hissed. The PK pistol-whipped her across the face and he thought he heard bone break. Shouting, he tried to break away but Braca and the other PK had him pinned before he could turn his head. The room swam dangerously and the corners of his vision started to darken...  
  
When his consciousness surfaced it was to rumpled covers on the bed and a splatter of blue on the carpet. He must have only been gone for a few microts because Braca hadn't let his guard down. The pulse pistol was so close that he couldn't focus on it. Behind its fuzzy outline Braca was smiling, chin up, looking so smug and self-satisfied that Crichton wanted to relieve him of his front teeth.  
  
"Ah, Crichton. I have been looking forward to this for some time." He sounded like he'd been rehearsing. Crichton told him as much and got himself bitch-slapped with a pulse-pistol for his trouble.  
  
Crichton spat blood and maybe a little bile. His bravado belied the shakiness in his voice, "Still miffed about the command carrier or was that just for kicks?" He felt Braca's weapon traveling down his neck, arriving at the point where his left arm joined his shoulder. Crichton began to grow uneasy. "Careful, Lefty. I'm still the prize at the bottom the Cracker Jack box. Scorpy's gonna be pissed if you damage his decoder ring."  
  
Braca's smile widened a little. "Your life isn't worth as much as it used to be."  
  
"How d'you figure?"  
  
Braca relished every word, "High Command has abandoned Scorpius' wormhole project. Any value you may have had as a repository for such knowledge is now, well...negligible. The council is more interested in how you will function as an example to those who defy Peacekeepers."  
  
Crichton could feel Aeryn and the child slipping away from him. He covered up his rising panic, "Anybody bother to tell Scorpy? This is gonna break his little black heart."  
  
Braca wasn't smiling anymore. "You've been nothing but trouble for me, Crichton."  
  
Fair enough.  
  
"Given my previous experience with you, High Command has authorized me to use whatever means I consider necessary to bring you in. Dead or alive."  
  
Braca sounded a little too happy about that last part.  
  
"One wound and you bleed out. That was what you told me on the royal planet. I have been longing to explore how accurate that statement is. If nothing else it will make you easier to handle."  
  
Braca was smiling again and PKs don't joke.  
  
Crichton forced himself to laugh. "Whoa, whoa, wait a mi-"  
  
"NO!" the word was an infuriated roar torn from Chiana's throat.  
  
The calm part of him registered relief that she was still alive.  
  
The same part of his mind was pissed that her vision was about to come true.  
  
It happened so suddenly that Crichton didn't even feel the pulse blast. The force of it spun him like a top. He felt his body hit the wall face first but it took a few moments before he registered the damage the pulse-weapon had done. Pressure, numbness, then hot waves of pain radiated from his shoulder down his arm and through his back and torso. 'Frell' and 'hezmona' didn't do justice to the situation. In the end all he managed was, "Damn..."  
  
Braca nodded to his PK buddy, "Get him up. We'll take the Nebari as well."  
  
PK Drone #1 wasn't very careful of his injured arm. Across the room he heard Chiana grunt and snap at #2 as he hauled her to her feet. He was being ushered into the hall before he could get a look at her. He looked instead at his arm. Blood was flowing freely now, dripping off his fingers and leaving a mapwork of perfectly round little dots on the carpet.  
  
Small groupings.  
  
Like constellations.  
  
#1 had his right arm twisted behind his back. His left was free. He couldn't seem to make the limb move, though. Nerve damage. Fabulous.  
  
Crichton found out he was right about Braca bringing backup. Four more soldiers stood at attention in the hall. He had to swallow a smart remark about Braca overcompensating for something. A couple of the hotel's guests poked their heads out of their rooms to see what the noise was all about, but when they caught sight of the UT's version of storm troopers their doors flew shut and didn't open again. Smart people. Frelling cowards, but smart.  
  
He didn't see Aeryn or D'argo or Rygel. Maybe they weren't in custody yet. Maybe they'd gotten away. There were other 'maybes' too. He didn't let himself think about those.  
  
They had to wait for the level riser. There might have been a back way out of the building but Crichton wasn't sure. The fact that Braca felt he had no need for secrecy made Crichton's spirits sink further. It meant he knew Crichton had no allies here.  
  
Crichton was strung between Drone #1 and one of the hall monitors. He noticed that they were the biggest boys in the lot. Somehow it was satisfying to know that Braca still found him that threatening. If he angled his head he could get a good look at Chiana. An oozing blue gash crawled across her cheek and terminated at the point of her chin. Her cheek was swollen and painful-looking where it had split. She was also going to have one hell of a shiner tomorrow, but at least she was steady on her feet.  
  
He had to swallow before he asked, "How you doin', Pip?" His throat felt like sand-paper.  
  
"Better than you." Her lips hinted at a smile. Surprisingly he felt his own lips twitch as if he were responding to some inside joke. Maybe he was.  
  
"Silence," Braca warned.  
  
"Hey, if you wanted me to be quiet then maybe you should have waited a little while to get your rocks off. See, what I'm getting at is that maybe shooting me WASN'T THE BEST IDEA!" Oooo...shouting wasn't the best idea either. It used too much oxygen. Crichton closed his eyes and let his head loll forward. Maybe that way he could get some blood flowing back into it. "Somebody better find me something to stop the bleeding or else you're going to be carrying me."  
  
He didn't get any bandages, though. Not from Braca. The level-riser had arrived...and Scorpius was inside.  
  
Crichton instantly forgot his own advice.  
  
"You son of a bitch!" the words exploded in the corridor before he even realized they were his. Hands tightened on his arms. "You sold me out! What the hell is wrong with you? You know they're scrapping the wormhole project? Didn't they tell you? That's right, they took the toys away and you just screwed us both!"  
  
He didn't get the reaction that he'd been expecting. Suddenly he realized it was too quiet in the corridor. The only other noise was the uncertain shifting of the PKs behind him. Crichton had the same feeling that he got back home when he'd stepped off the elevator on the wrong floor of the department store but was too embarrassed to get back on.  
  
Of course he wanted to visit the cosmetics counter. Why wouldn't he?  
  
Now that his blinding rage had subsided a little, Crichton saw that Scorpius wasn't the only one in the level-riser. D'argo, Aeryn and Rygel were with him, and, like Scorpius, they did not seem surprised by what was happening. D'argo's qualta blade sheath was empty, but only because the weapon was in his hands. Aeryn's pulse pistol was likewise raised. Both weapons were trained on the lieutenant, not Scorpius.  
  
The stunned look on Braca's face was absolutely priceless.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Scorpius' eyes fell on Crichton, on the glistening wound in his shoulder. The half-breed's lip curled into a snarl that was pure Scarran.  
  
Braca looked like he was having difficulty forming words. His eyes darted from Crichton to Scorpius, taking in D'argo and Aeryn on the way. Looking past the weapons that they held Braca collected himself enough to say, "Sir, I am pleased to see you alive. When your prowler did not regroup with the other ships after the command carrier imploded I assumed you were-"  
  
Scorpius spared Braca only the briefest of glances and spoke to one of the soldiers holding Crichton instead, "Officer, put pressure on that wound."  
  
A gasp of pain as the PK carried out Scorpius' instruction kept Crichton from muttering a sarcastic 'thank you'. The hall was spinning and he was having trouble making sense of what was happening. Out of habit he tried to check in with Aeryn, but her eyes were on Braca and the PKs with not an ounce of attention left for the human in their custody.  
  
An angry Luxan hiss drew Crichton's attention to Scorpius' other side. Apparently D'argo had noticed Chiana's wounded face. Crichton felt a twinge of pity for the PK with the Nebari's blood on his hands. He also felt sorry for whoever was going to have to clean the carpet tomorrow.  
  
Maybe he spaced out, because Scorpius was suddenly very close. "Are you all right, John?"  
  
Crichton was proud of himself for not starting. "My guardian angel," he muttered sarcastically, "Didn't know you cared." Having his arm laid open by a pulse blast tended to make him a little cranky. "Tell your lap dog to be nice."  
  
"They are not here because of me, John...They are here because of you."  
  
Crichton felt his eyebrows pull together in a frown. Maybe one day he'd uncover a mathematical equation that explained why everything in the universe was his fault. Until then he'd settle for some morphine and a proper dressing for his shoulder. #1 obviously didn't know much about first aid because his fingers were gouging the wound. Maybe the son of a bitch was enjoying it.  
  
"This planet was part of a Peace-keeper project, an experiment in germ warfare," Scorpius explained.  
  
God, another Peacekeeper project. Could he get a punch card? It made perfect sense, though. Multiple strains of the same virus, in this case the Karatonga plague, striking an entire population simultaneously and nobody thought it was strange? The planetary authorities were probably getting a kickback from the Peacekeepers.  
  
"Huh...there a reason you didn't let me in on this sooner?"  
  
"The quarantine had been lifted by the time Officer Sun and I arrived. I had hoped the threat of discovery had passed."  
  
"Too convenient..."  
  
"If I had told you the truth you would have thought I was trying to deceive you. Why do you think I wanted you to leave this planet for a safer location?"  
  
Crichton wanted to laugh except he knew it would hurt too much. Maybe he should tell Scorpy about Chi's vision: funny story, Grasshopper, I was just about to ask you to get me off this rock 'cause Chiana here told me I was gonna get shot if I didn't. Ain't that a kick in the head? Too late now, huh?  
  
Scorpy continued explaining, "The Diagnosans were reporting their findings to the Peace-keepers. Because of your...unique physiology you were no doubt singled out as an anomaly. Most likely whoever was processing the data cross-referenced your file with existing Peace-keeper records and found a match."  
  
Great, somewhere some over-achieving PK med-tech was getting a promotion for locating the infamous John Crichton.  
  
Brown-nosing little snitch.  
  
"This is all *very* interesting, Scorpy," Crichton hissed through clenched teeth, "but I can't solve wormholes if I bleed to death in a hallway!"  
  
"I am aware of the situation, John," Scorpius deadpanned.  
  
"It's your party, Scorp. You clean up."  
  
Scorpius turned his attention to his former second-in command.  
  
"Sir," Braca looked antsy. He'd watched the exchange without interrupting but now whatever intimidation he'd felt seemed to be wearing off. "I'm afraid I need to know your intentions regarding the human."  
  
Scorpius gave him an indulgent smile that hid a feral snarl. "Lieutenant," The half-breed was all Commanding Officer when he spoke to Braca, "John Crichton is in my protective custody and I will not have him harmed. I suggest that you release him at once."  
  
The PKs holding Crichton and Chiana looked at Braca.  
  
Braca looked uncomfortable.  
  
"Sir, my orders come directly from High Command. I am returning Crichton to Peace-keeper custody for trial and punishment," he explained.  
  
"Are you?" Scorpius glided forward a single pace. D'argo and Aeryn followed his lead. The combination was enough to set the Peacekeepers on edge. Crichton heard leather creak as the PKs shouldered their weapons.  
  
For the lieutenant, it finally seemed to sink in. "Sir, you don't want to do this."  
  
Six guns to two, and Braca had hostages.  
  
The walls were closing in, but Scorpius was as cool as the other side of the pillow. "The Council has no intention of using the valuable knowledge locked inside John Crichton's brain...do they, lieutenant?"  
  
"I am not aware of the Council's full intentions." But there was uncertainty in the lieutenant's voice.  
  
Scorpius was eyeing the blood dripping from Crichton's arm. He let none of his earlier concern for the human color his words. "Crichton is far more valuable as a resource for uncovering wormhole technology. Until Peace- keeper High Command realizes this...they may not have him."  
  
There was a moment of uneasy silence in which Crichton fought to maintain his balance, no mean feat with the weight of PK Drone #1's meaty hand on his shoulder.  
  
"If you try to prevent me from carrying out my orders, then you are a traitor," Braca said icily.  
  
Poor Braca, Crichton thought. How many of the lieutenant's C.O.s had to go renegade before he began to lose faith in the system?  
  
"My dear lieutenant...it is you who are the traitor. Without wormhole technology the Peace-keepers will be extinct in less than one hundred cycles, the entire Sebacean race in less than two hundred, along with whichever species are allied with us under Grayza's treaties. If Crichton dies, any hope for the future dies with him. Are you prepared to accept those consequences?"  
  
Braca had his earplugs in. "My orders stand...sir."  
  
Scorpius wasn't giving up any ground. He turned calmly to the PK grasping Crichton's shoulder. "Officer, release the human."  
  
The lieutenant raised his voice, "Stand fast, Officer Ragel. Take no further orders from Scorpius."  
  
Scorpius rose to the challenge, "I remind you all that I was never formally relieved of my command. Disobeying the orders of the superior officer on scene is tantamount to mutiny."  
  
The PKs' helmets masked all expression but Crichton could have sworn they looked uneasy.  
  
"You lost your command when you lost your ship," Braca countered. "Be smart, Scorpius. You are out-gunned and outnumbered. Whatever happens, you are not leaving this establishment with the human."  
  
"Whatever happens, Braca, you are not leaving this hallway alive." Scorpius made his voice a barely audible hiss. "Your numbers may be greater but I assure you that the first shot fired will be aimed directly at your head."  
  
This time Braca absorbed the half-breed's words. He was staring down the barrels of two weapons that said Scorpy wasn't just whistling Dixie. The half-breed knew how to play the lieutenant. Braca wouldn't sacrifice himself over one man, no matter how badly High Command was itching for him.  
  
Scorpy savored the moment, "It appears we are at an impasse...lieutenant."  
  
Braca was sweating. Crichton could see him weighing his options. When he finally spoke the calm in his voice sounded forced, "It isn't too late, Scorpius. If you turn the escaped prisoners over to me now there is a chance that your commission can still be reinstated."  
  
Crichton wanted to laugh. Nicely done, Braca. Try to make Scorpius believe this isn't a pathetic bid to save your own ass. He cast a glance as Scorpy, wanting to share the joke, but Scorpius actually seemed to be considering the lieutenant's words.  
  
"Reinstatement..."  
  
Braca nodded.  
  
Crichton felt the smile fade from his lips.  
  
"...means very little to me without the ability to pursue wormholes..." Scorpius finished suggestively.  
  
Braca saw his opening and jumped in, "Now that we know you're alive, there is a chance that the wormhole project can be resurrected. When the Council reads my report that you single-handedly recaptured Crichton and the escaped prisoners they will have no choice but to hear your appeal."  
  
Scorpius looked doubtful but he was still listening.  
  
Braca played his trump card, "There has also been word that a new Gammak research base is under construction in the Petarsis system. Captain Kohen was initially chosen to head the project, but she was killed recently while travelling through the Nebari sector. High Command will be looking for a replacement."  
  
Crichton felt his blood-pressure rising. "He's full of shit, Scor-" He was cut off roughly as #1 squeezed his shoulder, sending bolts of fire shooting through his upper body. He gritted his teeth and tried to take the pain but couldn't prevent a grunt from escaping. It was a measure of how screwed he was that Scorpius didn't even look at him. Through the haze of pain and blood-loss he felt strangely disconnected, as if he were watching the exchange between Scorpius and Braca on television.  
  
Crichon's gaze wandered over to Aeryn. This time she was looking right at him and-  
  
*snap*  
  
Like crystal.  
  
Their eyes locked, and for an instant he thought he saw...he couldn't be sure what. Her alien emotions were hard to read at the best of times, impossible at the worst. Just a flicker, and it was gone before he could register what it meant. Then the shroud came down: cold, blank, the mask of a Peace-keeper, a soldier.  
  
She hadn't made him any promises that she knew she couldn't keep.  
  
Even if they got out of this one alive, even if they were all unhurt, even if Scorpy held up his end of the deal, even if they got the child back -*his* child- there was no guarantee that Aeryn would ever give him what he wanted, that she wouldn't leave him again.  
  
*Don't make me say good-bye.*  
  
He could force her. He could hold this over her head until hell froze over. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't considered it, but every time he did a ghostly voice would whisper *Don't push her*.  
  
It had to be her choice, not his. He couldn't live with himself otherwise.  
  
And she couldn't live with him.  
  
Breathe.  
  
He looked away, reeling as if he'd been slapped. When Crichton focused on Braca again, the lieutenant looked too relaxed for his comfort.  
  
Aeryn and D'argo were tense. Whatever happened, they wouldn't go quietly. He could hear a low hiss building in the Luxan's throat. All Aeryn's weight was on her good leg. On the other side of the hall Chiana was shifting back and forth uneasily, moving as much as the PK's grip would allow. Rygel had vanished completely and Crichton would bet his good arm that the little Dominar was cowering somewhere behind the Luxan's imposing bulk.  
  
The half-breed moved closer to Braca, smiling warily. Braca smiled right back. "Your offer," Scorpius began leisurely, "...though appealing...is one that I will have to, regretfully, decline."  
  
Scorpius moved too fast for Crichton to see. One moment his posture was relaxed and his hands were empty, the next he was jamming a med-injector into Braca's neck. The lieutenant's back arched, his eyes rolled up into his head and a microt later all hell broke loose.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Crichton did not notice the noise at first. His eyes, along with the eyes of everyone in the hall were riveted on Scorpius and Braca and the injector sticking out of the lieutenant's neck. It was a low whine, steadily building in pitch and volume. Then the PK's were looking around, their lieutenant's well being forgotten in the sudden, urgent need to locate the source of the noise. There was an alarmed shout and one of the men bringing up the rear began to claw frantically at his thigh.  
  
Pulse pistol.  
  
Set to overload.  
  
Crichton had just enough time for that thought before he was thrown roughly to the ground by the force of the explosion. A thick cloud of dust choked the hallway and pieces of flaming debris stung his skin and stuck in his hair. Officer Ragel's heavy body landed squarely atop him. Crichton's breath shot out of his lungs and a grey haze that was either dust or unconsciousness slammed down.  
  
Crichton swam up out of the murky haze to the realization that Officer Ragel was still conscious, inadvertently grinding Crichton's injured shoulder into the ground as he struggled to right himself. Crichton managed to drag a painful breath into his lungs and free his right arm from under the man's crushing weight. "Get...the...hell...off...me!" he shouted, punctuating each word by smashing his elbow into the PK's face-plate. Ragel finally took the hint and rolled to the side, dazed. Crichton took the opportunity to relieve him of his pulse-rifle, handling it awkwardly with his one good hand, and managed to make it to his knees before he heard the first pulse-blast. It had come from behind him. Crichton couldn't see through the swirling haze except for where pulse-fire illuminated the dust. Another shot and he hit the deck, landing atop a strangely familiar and yielding object.  
  
Braca.  
  
The lieutenant was twitching, foaming at the mouth, his eyes open but blank with pain. Pain, and a flash of recognition when he caught sight of Crichton.  
  
The next pulse-blast was close enough to singe the hair on his head. Crichton spared Braca one more look and backed away, scrambling on all fours like an injured crab. He could just make out the shape of things in the corridor. Scorpy must have been thrown back into the level-riser by the explosion. The half-breed's pointy shoes were sticking out like he was the Wicked Witch of the East under Dorothy's house. D'argo and Aeryn were pinned inside also, kept there by pulse fire from two of the PKs. The grunts had taken cover behind a mound of debris that may have been part of a wall before its spontaneous remodeling.  
  
A cross between a shriek and a growl tore Crichton's attention from the firefight.  
  
Chiana.  
  
PK Drone #2 had her forced up against a wall face first, grinding her bloody cheek against the unyielding surface. He had a pulse-pistol under her chin and he could see from the PK's posture that it was summary execution time. Things were going to hell in a hand-basket and Braca's stock 'Plan B' had much in common with Crichton's own: if it moves, shoot it.  
  
Crichton didn't try to stand for fear he'd get his head blown off in the crossfire. Instead, he jammed his pilfered weapon into the Peacekeeper's thigh. "Let her go, you piece of sh-! Uh oh." He was holding the weapon the wrong way. The PK noticed too. This close, Crichton could actually see him smiling behind his damned faceplate.  
  
The PK turned his weapon on Crichton and Chi took advantage of the distraction to free an arm. Elbow in the gut, fist in the face, and the PK stumbled over Crichton, falling directly in the line of fire. The poor bastard never made it to the ground alive. Crichton heard the unmistakable *whoovf* of D'argo's qualta rifle and the PK hit the floor with a smoking hole drilled clean through his torso.  
  
"Down!" Crichton shouted, dragging on Chiana's hand. A shot zinged over his head and hit the wall just inches shy of her arm. She dropped down beside him. They were too exposed here. The two remaining PK's had a pile of rubble for cover. D'argo and Aeryn at least had the door-frame of the level- riser to protect them. If he and Chiana made a break for cover they risked being hit in the crossfire or drawing the attention of the two remaining armed PKs.  
  
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.  
  
"HEY!" Crichton shouted. He pinned Chiana behind him, shielding her body with his own. He brought the pulse-rifle up with his good arm, fired-  
  
-and missed the PKs entirely. With only one arm to stabilize the rifle, the shot went wide and nailed a completely non-threatening pile of debris. Pieces of whatever passed for drywall on this planet scattered into the air and rained down in a pathetic sprinkle on top of his intended targets.  
  
All he'd done was piss them off. They swivelled and locked their sights on the two vulnerable targets crouched in the corner.  
  
Aw, shit...  
  
Crichton fumbled with the pulse rifle, fingers slippery with sweat, eyes itchy with dust.  
  
Fortunately he'd just given Aeryn and D'argo the distraction they needed. With the PKs' attention on Crichton and Chiana they took the risk of exposing themselves, stepping out of the level-riser to get a better angle. D'argo fired, taking one man down with a clean shot to the head. Aeryn got the second in the hand, then, when he failed to drop, again in the shoulder.  
  
Somewhere someone was breathing heavily. Other than that, the silence was complete. Dust was settling on a corridor full of unmoving red and black uniforms and probably the whole exchange had taken less than a minute.  
  
Score one for the underdogs.  
  
Chiana was pressed against Crichton's back. Through the material of his vest he could feel the young Nebari's heart pounding, lungs heaving. The dust-laden atmosphere made breathing feel like he wasn't so much respirating as eating the air.  
  
Brief fit of coughing. "Pip, you okay?"  
  
She was hanging onto him, her fingers biting into him like teeth. "Nothing a few raslacs and a blind Diagnosan can't fix." She touched her cheek, the hideous blue gash, and tried to hide a wince behind a jittery smile. "You?"  
  
He laughed, a sound too sharp and abrupt to be reassuring. "On the bright side, my wrist isn't bothering me anymore." Wasn't quite true. The scratch from earlier itched like a son-of-a-bitch, but Chi didn't need to know that.  
  
A grunt and a strangled curse drew Crichton's attention further down the corridor where it looked like part of the crumbled wall was struggling to extricate itself from the rest of the rest of the debris. Crichton frowned. "Take this," he told Chiana, handing over his stolen rifle. The weapon wasn't going to do him any good anyway, not if he could barely point the thing.  
  
Chiana shouldered the weapon and took up a defensive posture behind him as he crawled over and began sifting through the debris. Crichton jumped and jerked his hand back when it came into contact with something warm, squirming and infuriated. "Frell! My eye!"  
  
"Sparky?"  
  
"Yes, you big, clumsy human," came the muffled reply. "Now get this dren off of me! And try to do it without gouging my other eye out!"  
  
Even with Chiana's help Crichton was sweating and dizzy by the time they managed to free the Hynerian from underneath the rubble. It took three hands to pull him out and they all landed in a heap with a very dirty Rygel the Sixteenth crowning the pile.  
  
"Sparky, what the hell happened to you?" Crichton asked breathlessly. Rygel's weight atop his chest pulled uncomfortably at his wound. He tried to be as quick and gentle as possible as he pushed the Hynerian off to the side but Rygel still landed hard on his rump, glaring knives up at the larger human. The Dominar may have been irate but at least he was uninjured. His once-purple robes were the same color as his skin, a gritty grey-brown and when he sneezed, a pathetic little cloud of dust rose from his earbrows.  
  
"Do you think that Peace-keeper's weapon overloaded by itself?" Rygel snarled. "No. The stupid frellnik never even saw me. He was too busy staring at all of you. Ghah! I should never have agreed to that half- breed's plan. I barely managed to take cover before the frelling thing exploded and took half the corridor with it! What the frell is so funny?"  
  
Crichton didn't realize he was hiccupping with laughter until Sparky said something. Chiana looked at him as if he'd suddenly sprouted tankas like a Luxan. "Guido, you blew up a Peace-keeper?" When you love someone, say it with explosives! That seemed to be the vehicle of choice amongst the members of their Jerry-Springer-style family. He grinned crazily at Chiana and watched as she gave in to the small smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.  
  
Rygel frowned. "I nearly turned myself into a green smear on the wall for you and all the two of you can do is laugh! Body-breeders!" His indignant rant was interrupted by a fit of coughing.  
  
Crichton pulled the disenchanted little Dominar into a clumsy, one-armed hug. The gesture was slow and awkward, but it still managed to shock the irritated Hynerian. He thumped his small friend on the back. "Thanks, Sparky. You're a pal."  
  
"Yes, well...you're welcome," Rygel mumbled. "Now get off me. Your skin is too hot and you have breath like a dying drakek." The words may have been meant to sting but the Hynerian's little green heart just wasn't in it. Crichton's arm was shaking and it had probably occurred to him that the human was in a lot worse shape than he was.  
  
Chi noticed too. "C'mon, Old Man." She was tugging on his vest, careful not to pull on the wound. "Let's find something for your shoulder."  
  
Crichton couldn't seem to make his legs work. He covered it up by catching Chiana's hand. "Hey, Pip...thanks."  
  
She cocked her head. "For what?" she asked softly.  
  
"Everything." He realized he was going to have to be more specific. "For the heads-up...shoulda listened..."  
  
There was humorless laughter. A gloved hand twirled a lock of his hair. "Maybe next time you'll take me seriously?" It was a question and it wasn't.  
  
"I always take you seriously, Chiana."  
  
Chiana suddenly looked very sad. Her small pink tongue twitched in the shadowy cave of her mouth, searching for words she couldn't say.  
  
Black eyes...with little specks of light like stars.  
  
Crichton wasn't prepared when a fourth voice broke up their conversation.  
  
"Crichton, are you all right?"  
  
Aeryn.  
  
He looked up at the crisp, unwavering individual in Peacekeeper leathers hovering over him. She'd been raiding the dead. Crichton saw two pulse rifles and an ammunition pouch hanging on straps from her shoulders. She had brushed them behind her so that they wouldn't get caught as she made her way through the rubble. Four pulse charges were clipped to her belt.  
  
"Crichton?" she repeated. He thought he heard concern in her voice, but no, he was imagining it. There hadn't been any feeling there for a very long time. Not for him.  
  
He wasn't smiling anymore. Funny, Aeryn used to make him want to smile.  
  
"Never better," he mumbled in a voice that convinced no one, least of all himself, that it was true. Crap, he was *really* shaking now, leaning against a wall that he barely noticed was there, good arm wrapped around his knees. He was trying to look relaxed and failing miserably. Fever, shock, blood-loss. The PKs were dead, everyone was more or less okay, and he was coming down from the adrenaline rush of a lifetime. Crash and burn, baby. Crash and burn.  
  
If Aeryn's touch on his forehead was too abrupt and too rough, it was nothing compared to the pressure she put on his wounded shoulder.  
  
Little. Black. Stars.  
  
Aeryn, "Chiana, go find a dressing."  
  
Except to shift her weight, the young Nebari didn't move. She still clutched the pulse-rifle that Crichton had given her, cradling the weapon under her arm. Aeryn turned around to confront her and black eyes bored into blue-grey. "For him," Chi told her. She emphasized the statement with a stiff, gloved finger. "Not because you told me to. Okay? Not...for you." A scathing look, a blur of grey and Chiana was gone.  
  
Aeryn cleared her throat and used Crichton's shoulder as an excuse not to look him in the eye. "Your fever is up and this wound is going to go septic unless we clean it."  
  
Tell me something I don't know...  
  
But he didn't say the words. He was tired of wasting jokes on people who never laughed at them. Aeryn hadn't taken her hand away from his forehead. He felt the pad of her thumb begin to massage the muscle underneath his right eyebrow. It was the first spot that hurt whenever he had a headache. She was gentle...and she knew him too well. Her touch felt too good.  
  
It was wrong.  
  
"Aeryn..." With an appendage that was closer in color to Nebari than Sebacean, he reached up and peeled her hand away from his brow. "Don't."  
  
He let her other hand remain on his shoulder. There was a difference between necessity and need.  
  
He didn't have time to catalogue the hurt on Aeryn's face. That file was full. Chiana rushed into view with swathes of vaguely pink cloth draped over one arm, the ends trailing behind her like streamers. He flashed back to rumpled bedding and blue blood on the carpet. Meanwhile, in the present, there was a clear plastic bottle, Aeryn, and the words: "This is going to hurt."  
  
Rubbing alcohol, iodine, or some alien equivalent, he never found out. Aeryn eased the pressure off of his wound and a piece of cloth or skin clung to her palm. A terrible warmth spread down his arm. The corridor swam with shattered beams of light and motes of dust. Aeryn's jaw clenched, and something very important occurred to him, something that he absolutely needed to say. But all he managed before darkness reached up and dragged him down was, "Oh..."  
  
Crichton woke with his arm so tightly bound that it ached. The hallway was crowded with figures: dark shapes and fuzzy outlines, at once familiar and unfamiliar. A few things stood out: a thin braid of red hair, a black glove, the shape of a pulse-pistol...  
  
...and Scorpius standing out in stark relief against all of it.  
  
His reaction was visceral: fight or flight. Panic. Confusion. His back was literally against a wall. There had been another time, another wall. A cold cell and a comfy chair. Scorpius circling like a buzzard. Black and white and black and white-  
  
"John..." Scorpius caught his flailing fist with the same hand that had tossed him around like a rag-doll on the command carrier. Only this time the grip was meant to hold, not hurt, and it was a plea instead of a growl on the half-breed's lips. "John, calm down." In the end it was D'argo's voice that reached him, that and the strong hand on his uninjured shoulder. "John...stop." Crichton was shivering, so cold, but still sheathed in sweat.  
  
Scorpy brought something into view.  
  
Neural spike?  
  
Med-injector.  
  
Braca on the ground, squirming.  
  
Crichton pinned against a wall, squirming. Whatever was in the med-injector went in with a hiss while D'argo held him still. Traitor. Once it was done the Luxan let him go and he leaned back, glaring at his friend for all he was worth because he didn't have the strength to do anything else.  
  
He rubbed the site of the injection, taking in his surroundings. He couldn't have been out long; Aeryn was a silhouette over D'argo's shoulder, her outline hazy in the still-settling dust, features set in a grim mask.  
  
"What the frell did you give me?" he hissed.  
  
"Qatrac," Scorpius informed him. "A pain-killer and a stimulant. Peacekeepers use it during battle when there is not enough time to treat an injury properly. Your physiology is similar enough to Sebacean that I believe it will work."  
  
Crichton didn't ask where Scorpy had gotten the drugs. An open medical satchel was propped up against his thigh. Black, with the red and white Peacekeeper symbol emblazoned on the front, bits of actual Peacekeeper decorating it. It made sense that the medical officer would be bringing up the rear.  
  
D'argo was crouched beside him, a warrior's crouch. The qualta blade had found its way back into its sheath. Crichton could see the hilt from where he sat. "We need to move quickly, John. There may be more Peacekeepers on the way. Tell me when you feel strong enough to stand."  
  
Crichton hated to say so, but he didn't feel anything besides terrible. Chiana's hand was behind his head, her fingers pressing into the base of his skull. He relaxed into her touch. It was a small indulgence, and all he could afford right now. Even if Scory's happy pills didn't work as advertised he would still need to get up, keep moving, keep running. There was always one more critter, one more bad-guy, one more squad of PKs ready to shoot him full of holes. It was a damned whack-a-mole game, and all he needed was a minute to rest, just a minute.  
  
Somebody dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.  
  
He got ready to bash whoever it was but realized that he was still bone- dry. The water kept pouring and his lips parted in a silent scream.  
  
"John?"  
  
Shapes were too sharp. Colors were too bright. Scorpius looked like he was backlit and everything seemed to be moving that wasn't, including himself. "Whoa, God..." How many arns since he'd had those two shots in the bar? 'Cause he sure as hell didn't want to be mixing depressants with this shit.  
  
"Crichton?"  
  
"S'working."  
  
"How is the pain in your arm?"  
  
"What arm?"  
  
Harvey with a wooden death-grip on the biggest cup of Starbucks he had ever seen.  
  
Scorpius, "Ka D'argo, how far away is your ship?"  
  
"Half a metra. Southeast spaceport. Hangar three," the Luxan answered succinctly.  
  
Scorpius got to his feet, all business. "I suggest we leave immediately. The Qatrac will wear off in a little under an arn."  
  
"Winona..." Crichton heard himself say and from somewhere Chiana produced the pulse-pistol. He slid it gratefully into its holster. All was right with the world.  
  
"Can you make it, John?"  
  
"Yeah, Scorp." This was a couple of two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew the night before finals, a roller-coaster ride after too much cotton candy, a pack of cigarettes on an empty stomach, and a few other things he couldn't put his finger on. He didn't need to read the warning label on the bottle of Qatrac to know that this was the kind of feeling he was going to have to pay for later. He swayed to his feet and clapped a hand on D'argo's shoulder, "Let's blow this popsicle stand."  
  
Crichton couldn't keep his eyes from wandering over to Aeryn. She'd stripped a set of body-armour from one of the dead PKs and she looked way too good in it. Aeryn caught him looking at her. She nodded. Once. Ready to rock.  
  
Damnit, after all she'd done, why was she still his point of reference?  
  
He grabbed a hold of Scorpy's scaly arm. In a harsh whisper, "You've got a deal to keep."  
  
Scorpius was confident. "I assure you, John...by now your child is safely in the hands of my operatives."  
  
Crichton tried to hide a grimace. "Just remember the bargain, Scorp. Wormholes..."  
  
God, if there was a more hideous sight in the universe than Scorpius' smile, he didn't know what it was. Some lucky dentist could retire off those choppers. The half-breed clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder and Crichton was glad that he had enough drugs in his system not to feel it. "We will accomplish much together, John Crichton."  
  
Braca was still on the ground, still twitching. "What did you give him, Grasshopper?"  
  
The hybrid stood over his former second-in-command and regarded him with mild interest. "I am not entirely sure...but it believe it was meant for Scarran physiology."  
  
Souvenir from the dreadnaught.  
  
There was something Crichton had to know, "He was offering the world, Scorp. Why didn't you bite?"  
  
Scorpius snorted. "Peace-keeper lies."  
  
Peacekeeper lies.  
  
They stepped over Braca and into the level-riser.  
  
Going Down.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Besh.  
  
In some other part of the galaxy the word was probably a curse. Here, it was a planet. Gorrm found that the two were much the same thing.  
  
Besh was an ugly world, not much more than a large asteroid that had somehow managed to attract an atmosphere...a thin, heavily polluted atmosphere that was subject to constant change in temperature and pressure. Its native population was a race of submissive, semi-intelligent beings that lived, worked, and bred under the rule of a small Scarran colony. They ran a fairly efficient spaceport, provided supplies and information to the Scarrans, and (most importantly) were expendable in a crisis.  
  
And oh, how Gorrm wished for some crisis that would justify sterilizing this gods-forsaken rock.  
  
Twenty cycles ago he had not been such a pessimist. Twenty cycles ago he'd been a brilliant geneticist in the Scarran military corps, and twenty cycles ago he'd been given an assignment that could make or break his career.  
  
Break, as it turned out.  
  
The Beshish held the promise of genetic advancement, his superiors told him. True, upon initial examination they were unimpressive: short in stature, with soft, permeable skin and small brain cavities. But there was more: the rapidly changing environment of their world had produced in the species an ability to adapt to whatever threatened their environment. In as little as a single generation variances in temperature, pressure, even chemical factors, were compensated for. An element that was poisonous to a parent would have negligible affects on their child. If this capability could be harnessed, duplicated, it would be the greatest genetic advancement the Scarran Empire had seen in over one hundred cycles.  
  
Gorrm had been given a laboratory, a fine team of assistants, currency enough to hire outside experts of his own choosing, and free reign to use the inhabitants of Besh however he saw fit. But after twenty cycles of DNA extraction, forced breeding sessions, tests and experiments which reduced the Beshish population by one-tenth, there was one thing that Gorrm knew beyond all doubt: he had failed. Every offspring died. Every attempt to graft organs onto a Scarran resulted not only in the death of the donor, but the death of the recipient as well. Gorrm could no longer justify the loss of so many subordinates. His superiors wanted results, and for twenty cycles Gorrm had had nothing to show them but empty data banks and a mountain of corpses.  
  
The experiment was over, and he wanted off this miserable waste-hole of a planet.  
  
At least, that was how he felt yesterday. Today Gorrm wouldn't trade his post on Besh for his choice of assignment anywhere in the Scarran Empire, and all because of one.little.thing.  
  
Gorrm tilted his head slightly, regarding the tiny pink infant floating calmly in the cylindrical storage tank that was now the centerpiece of his lab. Every so often the infant's limbs would twitch as if in distress, but mostly it slept, curled up on itself. It was a behavior it had learned while still in the cramped confines of its mother's womb, but which it was reluctant to give up now that it had a more spacious environment.  
  
This tiny life form represented so many possibilities. No product of Scarran and Beshish genetics, this. No, this was something completely different: an accident, a wonderful, perfect accident that had fallen from above directly into his hands.  
  
Specifically, it had fallen from a dreadnought.  
  
Well, not 'fallen' exactly.  
  
When Gorrm had picked up the Scarran dreadnought Ra'l'en in orbit of Besh one solar day ago he thought perhaps one of the ruling class had read his mind and come to put him out of his misery. Then came the coded transmission, priority clearance, telling him that he was about to receive an auto-nav life pod with a new specimen inside. The specimen was his to study as he saw fit, but the dreadnought would be back for regular progress reports.  
  
Gorrm had been grouchy and bitter at first, twenty years of failed research coming to the surface. What made the scientists on board the dreadnought so certain that he would have any interest in this new specimen? With reluctance, Gorrm opened the pod.  
  
.and looked upon something that could justify twenty miserable cycles on this planet.  
  
The Scarran scientific council had entrusted him with their only sample of a Sebacean/unclassified species hybrid. The fetus had been removed from its Sebacean mother on board the dreadnought Ra'l'en, but the council feared that with the coming war against the Peace-keepers the specimen was too valuable to risk losing if the vessel came under attack. They opted to find a safe location where the infant could be studied and remain hidden. Luckily, an old colleague of Gorrm's happened to be serving on the Ra'l'en. She was one of the few who still remembered that he was alive, and that he ran an efficient lab geared toward the study of alien genetics. The fetus had been packed off under a veil of secrecy and sent down to him for study. Only a handful of scientists aboard the Ra'l'en knew where it had been sent, and they had every confidence that Gorrm was the right choice for this assignment.  
  
Gorrm had not stopped working since the child arrived. He had become so caught up in the possibilities contained in this small life form that before he knew it the lab was empty and it was the middle of the solar night. He could not help it. Knowledge was an addiction. The more he had, the more he wanted. In six or seven monens the fetus would complete its gestation cycle and be ready to breathe atmosphere. Its body would be small and compact like a Sebacean. It would have the same permeable skin, the same coloring, but scans revealed that there was no paraphoral nerve, but another organ which was similar in function, regulating toxin removal from the body. If damaged it could be repaired, and it did not require a tissue transplant from a compatible donor. Unlike a Sebacean, the child's body would be able to regulate thermal increases, while still retaining much of the species' agility and endurance. Such a hybrid would make a valuable spy, amongst other things. Gorrm could learn more by dissecting it, but he was reluctant to sacrifice his only sample. Finding the child's father or another of his species should be their first priority. Gorrm had no doubt that the scientists aboard the Ra'l'en had come to the same conclusion. Having a pure specimen would enable him to-  
  
"Clytaeme."  
  
Gorrm raised his head at the sound of a small voice. A young Beshish girl no more than four cycles old stood in the doorway behind him.  
  
"Return to your cell, child." Gorrm instructed, turning his attention back to the readout panel at the base of the storage tank.  
  
A few moments later the infuriatingly calm little voice again implored, "Clytaeme?"  
  
Beshish speaking abilities were slow to develop. 'Clytaeme' was her name, and the only word that she knew.  
  
Gorrm sighed in frustration. Clytaeme had been raised in his lab, the product of one of his many experiments on the Beshish. The only reason she still lived was that her body had rejected the Scarran DNA she had been injected with in the womb. Gorrm kept her as a drudge. She performed tasks too menial for his assistants. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, but every so often-  
  
"Clytaeme!"  
  
The girl would not be ignored.  
  
Gorrm surveyed the lab. It was empty of personnel except for Clytaeme and himself. The little girl's expression was twisted into a pout. He stood and began stalking toward her, his lip curling into a snarl. Uncertainty replaced her petulant expression. Her little arms dropped to her sides and she pivoted in order to beat a hasty retreat. That was when Gorrm surged forward and snatched her up. Clytaeme squealed and kicked her little legs helplessly. Gorrm swung her around and her squealing turned into peels of laughter. After a few microts Gorrm heard his own deep-throated laughter joining hers.  
  
"It is late, child. Time to sleep," he rumbled when her giggles tapered off into a yawn. "I have many tasks for you tomorrow."  
  
Clytaeme curled herself into a ball in his arms, knowing that he would carry her to bed now, just as he had every night since before she could remember.  
  
For the last twenty cycles Gorrm's research had hinged upon the study of family groups, clans. Clytaeme's was one of them. They were dead now, her parents and her older siblings, like so many others, sacrificed to his failed experiments. Clytaeme had been the last child her mother had produced. Around the time that Clytaeme's mother died, Gorrm had come to the realization that no amount of experimenting on the Beshish would produce the results he wanted. He kept a few subjects, purely as an excuse to maintain his lab. The rest he released back to their families. Clytaeme had no family. He could have disposed of her easily, saved himself the trouble of attending to a helpless infant. It was within his rights, but to take his frustration over his failure out on one child seemed.petty. And without his research, what else had there been to occupy his days?  
  
She was still an inferior species, still his to experiment on if he wished, but that experiment as over. There were things he could teach her, ways she could be of use during the critical stages of this next project. With hope for the future came hope for other things as well. Perhaps there were a few things on this miserable planet worth salvaging after all.  
  
Clytaeme suddenly looked up at him, blinking her little yellow eyes sadly.  
  
"What is the matter, child?"  
  
Clytaeme did not answer. Beshish had no tear ducts, but the membrane covering her eyes began to flutter rapidly, indicating emotional distress. Gorrm held her more tightly, concerned. Her face pressed into his neck and Gorrm felt a sharp sting. Scarran hide was tough, but Clytaeme's teeth were razor-sharp, and they sank through his flesh effortlessly. Instantaneously the corners of his vision began to darken. He had to concentrate in order to keep his hold on the girl. The dark, rational corner of his mind told him to drop the child, pull her off, but for some unfathomable reason he did not. Perhaps he was afraid of injuring her, even though he knew beyond a doubt that she was killing him.  
  
Her venom was quick, but slow enough that Gorrm had time realize he was the victim of his own experiments: Twenty cycles of evolution.all it took was a single generation and every new threat to their environment was compensated for.  
  
Gorrm had been foolish not to count the Scarrans among those threats. But he did not die cursing his lack of foresight; he died amazed at the species' ability to get around it.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Gistae hobbled into Gorrm's lab when he was certain the job was done. He found the young Beshish girl crouched on the floor beside the Scarran's corpse.  
  
Everything was as expected.  
  
It had been difficult to convince Clytaeme to betray Gorrm. He was her guardian, and despite all he had done to her people, he was good to her. But on some level the little girl understood that she was a prisoner, and that the Scarrans were responsible for murdering her family. Even if her mind did not grasp that fact, her body did, and it responded through instinct.  
  
Gistae was Beshish, and a doctor. The Scarrans liked to consider their race inferior, but that had not stopped Gorrm from recruiting Gistae to aid in his failing research. He had been as horrified at how the Scarrans disposed of his people as he was helpless to do anything about it. Scarran rule was absolute. He was old, weak, and he had seen too much. Any protestation he made would be ignored. If he refused to carry out their orders he would be executed. Silence was his only weapon.  
  
Silence.and patience.  
  
Clytaeme was born with two extra teeth. When he looked, Gistae was not surprised to find hidden venom sacs under her jaw. He did not inform the Scarrans. If evolution followed the same pattern, within ten cycles there would no longer be a Scarran presence on Besh.  
  
Beshish who reached a certain age had the ability to end their lives with a thought. It was yet another grim but useful by-product of their evolution. Gistae was well beyond that age, and could have given up cycles ago. It would have been a great deal less painful than watching the Scarrans tear his people apart, but something inside him would not let him quit so easily. It was that part of himself that drove him to respond to the strange transmission he had received earlier that solar day. He did not know how the message got through. It had been relayed so many times that he had barely recognized the voice. It belonged to a very old acquaintance, one to whom he owed a great deal. And all that voice asked of him was one.small.favor.  
  
Apparently the Scarrans weren't the only ones with an interest in this strange, alien infant. Gistae did not know what Scorpius wanted with the alien specimen. Truthfully, he did not care. Helping an old friend was as good a reason as any to sever the ties that bound him.  
  
The experiment was over. It was time to burn the past, leave it in ashes before it did the same to him.  
  
Gistae went to the cylindrical storage tank in the center of the lab and began decoding the locking mechanism. There was no hurry. Gorrm's assistants would not return to the lab for another four arns. He would be gone in one. Scorpius had taken care of everything. The hybrid was as resourceful as he had ever been.  
  
Gistae transferred the strange Sebacean hybrid into a mobile unit, sparing a glance for the small figure still huddled next to her victim. "Do not be sad, girl," he advised her.  
  
Clytaeme ignored him, continuing to paw miserably at the Scarran's cold hand as if he might yet respond. Her bite had been effective, though. The Scarran would not respond to anything ever again. "Hurts." the child sobbed, tasting the word for the first time.  
  
"Of course it does." Doing what was right usually did.  
  
If possible the child sank further into herself. Gistae suspected that the little Beshish would have undergone any procedure Gorrm wanted if it meant her guardian would live again.  
  
He was not good with children, but he couldn't leave her like that. "Come, we have a long road ahead of us, and there is someone that I would like you to meet." Gistae scooped the child up and set her on her feet, gave her a gentle push toward the mobile storage tank that held the alien specimen. "Because of what we did tonight, no Scarran will ever hurt her."  
  
Clytaeme placed her small hand on the on the storage container's clear casing. Under her hand, the pink infant twitched, as if sensing there was another being nearby. The Beshish girl smiled.  
  
"Say 'hello' to her."  
  
"Hello," said Clytaeme.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
"Aw, hell..." The words were out of Crichton's mouth before he opened his eyes. There was nothing in his stomach to get rid of, but his gut wanted him to dry-heave just for the fun of it.  
  
"Are you awake?" D'argo's voice was gentle, but still too loud for his sensitive ears. Crichton nodded, not trusting himself to speak just yet. "Do not try to move. He said that would only make the withdrawal more painful." Crichton didn't try to figure out who 'he' was, but had no problem following the Luxan's advice. He lay still and let the world do the spinning for him. His left arm was throbbing like a son-of-a-bitch and his heart was hammering against his ribs like it wanted out. It took him a few hundred microts to even work up the energy to care where he was.  
  
Purple ceiling.  
  
D'argo's ship.  
  
He had no clear recollection of how he had gotten here.  
  
"Water..." he managed. He was so damn thirsty he could drink from a pothole and not complain.  
  
The shadowy features of a Luxan replaced Crichton's view of the ceiling. He heard liquid sloshing as it was poured into a container.  
  
"Can you sit up?"  
  
Crichton gave it his best effort. Thirst was a strong motivator. He was starting to make progress when the Luxan lost patience and hauled him upright. Crichton shook the stars out of his head. "You need to work on your bedside manner."  
  
"Drink," D'argo told him.  
  
It wasn't quite water, but at least it was cold. He remembered Jool and the fellip urine and decided not to ask.  
  
"How does your shoulder feel?" D'argo inquired.  
  
Crichton winced. "I wish you hadn't asked." He looked around. The ship was empty except for the two of them. The hatch was open and through it he caught a glimpse of the interior of a very large, very gray hangar. Everything was too still for his liking.  
  
The not-quite-water cleared some of the cobwebs out of his head. "I, uh.D, what's going on?"  
  
D'argo put the flask away. "How much do you remember?"  
  
There were shadows, a kind of dream-memory of leaving the hotel, of cool night air on his face, black sky above. Then a landing bay, the Farscape crouched in the shadow of a larger, snub-nosed ship, D'argo's ship.  
  
"Scorpius gave me something," he said finally. It was half guess, but the words sounded right.  
  
"Qatrac. It's a stimulant," D'argo explained.  
  
"We're still in the hangar," Crichton mumbled.  
  
The Luxan nodded.  
  
"Frell," His head was full of sand. He tried to shake it out. "Why is everything so damn fuzzy?"  
  
"Scorpius said that Qatrac sometimes affects short-term memory."  
  
Great, add that to the list of people, places and things that frelled with his head. "Where'd everybody go?"  
  
"Aeryn is outside guarding the ship. Scorpius said he needed to contact his operatives, to arrange for a rendezvous point. Chiana and Rygel went with him."  
  
"Right.why'd they do that?"  
  
"You said you didn't trust Scorpius to go alone." D'argo looked away and his voice became more subdued, "and you said you didn't trust Aeryn."  
  
Crichton froze, felt his face burn, heard the hollowness in his own voice, "I don't remember that."  
  
There had been conversation, heated conversation.an all-out argument culminating in a shouting-match. Crichton remembered very little except that he was an active participant, and that he got the last word in. An uncomfortable silence had followed, then someone asking him if he was cold. He must have said 'yes' because now he was boiling underneath his own coat as well as Aeryn's duster.  
  
Crichton pushed the coats off and scrubbed at his face with his one good hand. "How long have they been gone?"  
  
"A quarter-arn at most. No sign of any other Peacekeeper patrols so far. We'll lift off as soon as they return." The Luxan sounded as anxious as he was to be off this planet.  
  
Crichton turned his head. Aeryn stood guard at the base of the ramp. He couldn't see her face, but her hair was contained in a loose ponytail, the kind that reminded him of the early days, before the Gammak base, before Scorpius and the chair.  
  
A crab-shaped Sulertian merchant pod maneuvered free of its docking space, kicking up a brisk gale. A few strands of hair flew free of Aeryn's ponytail, swirling around her head like an aura. Crichton stared long enough to burn the image into the back of his brain. He closed his eyes and a large hand landed on his good shoulder. Crichton jumped at the unexpected physical contact. "Crap, man, don't do that."  
  
"I'm sorry, John. I thought you'd passed out." D'argo sounded relieved, and it occurred to Crichton that the Luxan was worried about him.  
  
"Just resting my eyes."  
  
The Luxan didn't look convinced. "You should sleep while you can. There's nothing to do now except wait."  
  
Aeryn.  
  
"Yes there is," Crichton said abruptly. He struggled to get his feet under him and would have pitched face-first into the floor if D'argo's reflexes had been a little slower. "I'm okay, I'm okay," Crichton slurred.  
  
D'argo set him back against the bulkhead. He tried reason, "Crichton, the more you move around the faster the Qatrac will metabolize out of your system."  
  
"Gimme another dose, then."  
  
"Another dose may stop your heart."  
  
"Is that what Scorpy thinks?"  
  
"It's what Aeryn thinks."  
  
Crichton struggled in tha Luxan's grip but D'argo held on. He was being as gentle as a Luxan could, which meant bruises instead of broken bones. He saw where Crichton was looking. "John.don't."  
  
Crichton made his friend meet his eyes. "D'argo, I have to talk to her."  
  
"John..." D'argo sighed. If there had been something the Luxan could have said to ease the human's pain, it would have gone in the silence that followed.  
  
The Luxan had a wife once.  
  
He knew what D'argo saw. Crichton didn't need a mirror to know he looked as bad as he felt.  
  
Finally the Luxan released Crichton and the smaller man slumped out of his grasp. D'argo's hand was still on his good shoulder. "I'm going to get the engines primed for takeoff. I want to be off this miserable planet as soon as possible. You.take it easy.until Scorpius gets back."  
  
Crichton managed a weak smile. As if it were possible for him to take anything easy anymore...  
  
"Yeah, you do what you need to do," Crichton told him. When the Luxan turned his back on him, the human whispered, "Thanks."  
  
D'argo went to the Pilot's seat and did not look back, not even when Crichton got noisily to his feet and climbed out of the ship. Once up he only had to focus on Aeryn and the side effects of the Qatrac faded to a distant hum.  
  
"Aeryn, I need to talk to you."  
  
She didn't turn to face him. "You shouldn't be up."  
  
Crichton immediately wished he'd brought the flask with him. His throat felt like the Sahara, but amazingly he didn't choke on his next words, "This can't wait, and I don't know when we'll get another chance to talk."  
  
She didn't say anything. He took that as an invitation to continue.  
  
"I need you to do something for me."  
  
A pause, then Aeryn took a stab at sarcasm, "Does this mean you trust me now?" Her voice was a broken thing.  
  
He could excuse himself from that, blame it one the drug, but he wasn't sure he'd be telling the truth. He did trust her, but not to do what was right for him.  
  
"Scorpy might still screw us." Crichton told her. Aeryn started to shake her head and he continued, "But it's seeming less and less like that's the case. If he doesn't...if Scorpius holds up his end of the deal...I need you to promise me something."  
  
She was frowning, waiting for him to continue. "What?"  
  
"Promise first."  
  
But Aeryn didn't make promises she wasn't sure she could keep. "No. You tell me first."  
  
Nothing was going to make this any easier, and he was so tired of fighting. "Aeryn, you're collateral. The baby is collateral." He made sure she understood that before he went on. "The less leverage Scorpius has the better. When he hands over the baby, I want you to take it and go."  
  
Aeryn shook her head vigorously. "No."  
  
He pressed on quickly, before he lost his nerve. His voice was stronger than his resolve. "Don't tell me where. Don't leave me any clues."  
  
"No, Crichton-"  
  
"Find someplace safe. Raise the baby however you want, as long as Scorpius can't touch it."  
  
"Crichton!"  
  
"Aeryn, it's what you want!"  
  
"*Don't tell me what I want!*"  
  
Crichton was stunned into silence by her outburst. Aeryn stalked close to him and he had to look at the ground. She didn't let him off so easily. Her hand was on his arm. He couldn't pull away and he couldn't bring himself to look at her. He ducked his head and she followed him move-for-move, catching his chin in her other hand so that he couldn't look away, couldn't hide what this was costing him.  
  
"It was never my intention to abandon you to Scorpius," she told him.  
  
He glared, wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. When it came away wet he didn't care if she noticed. "God, Aeryn, it's a little late for intentions, isn't it?" He couldn't look at her anymore, even if it meant he had to shut his eyes. "This way everybody gets what they want. Rygel, D'argo, Chiana, they get to go their own ways. You get the baby. Scorpius gets me..."  
  
"And what about you?"  
  
He didn't trust himself to answer and she didn't wait for one.  
  
"No, Crichton. Absolutely not. This is my doing. Whatever happens, we will face it together."  
  
"No, we won't." He was almost whispering, his voice husky. "Aeryn.the baby is very important to me. No matter what happens, I want it to be safe, and it will never be safe with Scorpius around. So please, just do what I'm asking."  
  
She challenged him with a look. "You said you wanted to be the father."  
  
He didn't need to hear that. It was more of an invitation than he could stand. "I am the father.and right now this is the best way I know how to be a father."  
  
"John-"  
  
"Just promise me you'll do it."  
  
"No-"  
  
"Dammit, Aeryn!" he nearly shouted. He took a breath to calm himself, swept a hand across suddenly burning eyes. "For once, just do what I tell you. Please."  
  
Aeryn was trembling, eyes shining. Oh God, it was the coin toss all over again only this time he was forcing her out of his space.  
  
*You said it was as if the fates meant for us to be together.Well, then, if it's true, we will be together again.*  
  
One breath.  
  
Two.  
  
"John, is this really what you want?"  
  
No.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Aeryn drew in a shuddering breath. "Alright," she conceded. She let her arm drop, leaving a pale handprint on his arm. "Your choice." Her next words hit him like a fist in his gut. "It was a girl." Crichton kept his eyes closed. He didn't want the child to have a face. When he didn't make a sound, Aeryn kept going relentlessly; "We were going to have a daughter."  
  
He wasn't in the equation of 'we'. Now he never would be.  
  
Dreadful calm settled over Crichton a microt before a voice said, "Drop your weapons and slowly turn."  
  
Crichton looked over Aeryn's shoulder and took in the lone figure standing behind her, already sure of what he was going to see.  
  
At least it wasn't a squad; just what was left of one.  
  
Officer Ragel: alive, awake and armed.  
  
They'd shot the bastard, hadn't they? Crichton racked his brain for information that would tell him this wasn't happening but came up with nothing. Ragel must have been playing possum. Hell, they were getting careless in their old age.  
  
Aeryn's face was red. Back in the corridor she'd been checking pulses and maybe she hadn't checked Ragel's. Whatever the case, her expression said she thought this was her fault.  
  
Aeryn extended her right arm, the one that held her rifle. The weapon dropped to the ground with a clatter. Behind him Crichton heard D'argo's qualta rifle strike the floor as well.  
  
"Now turn around. You, Luxan, out of the ship."  
  
Aeryn didn't turn right away. Her eyes traveled down Crichton's chest, ending up on his right thigh. Crichton nodded ever so slightly. Time slowed to a crawl.  
  
"Turn."  
  
Aeryn turned, pulling Winona out of her holster as she did so.  
  
"Drop your weapon," Aeryn ordered, "or I will shoot you".  
  
But he wouldn't...and neither would she.  
  
In the end it came down to who had the itchiest trigger finger, and Aeryn Sun never disappointed.  
  
Her shot spun the PK ninety degrees. In slow motion Ragel's knees buckled and his body folded like a puppet with its strings severed. He was on the verge of collapsing fully when his head suddenly snapped up and his arm flew out to his side.  
  
The guy wasn't even aiming.  
  
Or maybe he was.  
  
Because the single shot that he managed to squeeze off found Crichton's stomach with unerring precision.  
  
The PK was dead before he hit the ground, two pulse-blasts and fire from a qualta rifle making certain.  
  
If there was an interval between the moment the blast struck him and the moment he found himself staring at a gray ceiling, Crichton didn't remember it. There was an ache in the center of his stomach. Pressure, warmth, but no real pain. His hand was Harvey's or Harvey's was his and a black glove was slick with red. Then D'argo's hands were on top of his, trying to stop the flow of blood. The Luxan shouted something that he couldn't hear. There were footfalls, anonymous black boots making the deck quiver beneath his head. But everything was  
  
so  
  
quiet.  
  
Crichton let his head roll to the side and saw Harvey sprawled on the dull gray floor beside him. The neural clone had one hand clasped in a fist over his stomach. Crichton wasn't sure what half-Scarran blood should look like, but Harvey's was as red as his own. It welled up between his fingers, dripping down the black material of his coolant suit.  
  
"I did not see that coming either, John," Harvey admitted in a shocked voice.  
  
There was a cascade of black hair, a cool hand on his cheek. Arms that he could barely feel.  
  
A voice spoke to him out of his memory. Soft gray skin and softer words, *If you stay on this planet and wait for Scorpius, I think someone is going to kill you...*  
  
Oh.  
  
There was a moment of calm, of peace. It settled over him like a blanket.  
  
Then.clarity:  
  
It was wrong. *He* was wrong, a weapon, a repository for knowledge that could destroy the universe. Sparky had it right on the command carrier. *Nobody should wield such power...nobody.*  
  
Fate had let him off the hook for a while, just long enough to destroy Scorpius' wormhole research. Now she had come to collect. His life for the rest of the universe.it wasn't such a bad trade when he thought about it that way.  
  
He wasn't cold anymore. That was nice.  
  
He wondered if the other guy, the other him, had figured it out before he died. Probably. He was the one who left him the damned message.  
  
*Peacekeepers.they're your problem.*  
  
Funny thing.they'd been the same man at one point, but after the split he'd felt like they had nothing in common. The problem was they'd had too much in common.including her.  
  
Aeryn in the landing bay, her hair blowing in the wind.  
  
She'd take good care of the baby. His daughter.  
  
A small sound escaped his lips on an exhaled breath. When he did not draw another, he and the other John Crichton had one more thing in common.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Aeryn Sun's world was cold and blue. Buried under almost a metra of rock on a forgotten planet, an abandoned research base had become her life, her center. Above ground there was light, a breathable atmosphere. Here there were metal walls without decoration, hollow voices, a pallet in a small room and meals eaten hastily while her thoughts were elsewhere, dark corridors that she used only to travel to and from the only place that mattered to her.  
  
There was no furniture, only a tall storage container in the middle of the circular chamber, a solemn obelisk inscribed with alien text. Blue light radiated from the translucent column, painting the walls, the floor, and Aeryn Sun's skin with frozen color. There was a gentle electric hum in the background, a hypnotic sound to break up the stillness.  
  
The room was not designed for comfort. It was designed to sustain life. Aeryn pressed her forehead against the tall container. She did not care if she was ever comfortable again.  
  
Too much irreparable damage.  
  
Too much.  
  
Her hands curled ineffectually into fists. One hand was pressed against the glass, the other against her stomach, against the stiff material of her vest.  
  
Peacekeeper leathers could not protect her from the things that truly mattered.  
  
She didn't hear D'argo enter the room. She never did. It was part of their pattern. John Crichton had been a plague, a sweet, wonderful plague. Ka D'argo was his echo. The big Luxan understood her need for solitude, but he did not respect it.  
  
D'argo had held her that night in the hangar. There had been no room for speeches, no time for comforting words of strength, no reassurances. Just still, heavy limbs and lax lips that she pressed to her own while there was still enough warmth in them to let her believe...  
  
*Do you love Aeryn Sun?*  
  
*Beyond hope.*  
  
Hope. It was all any of them had left.  
  
John Crichton had died in her arms that night. He died in her dreams every night since then: coughing, pale and weak from radiation poisoning, or quickly from a pulse blast to the stomach.  
  
He was sprawled on the bed they had shared, left foot tucked behind right knee.  
  
He was lying on the cold floor of a hangar.  
  
He used his last moments to whisper words of comfort to her.  
  
He died too quickly to say anything at all.  
  
It made no difference. It was John and he was dead.  
  
Aeryn brought herself back to the present, back to the tall Luxan standing behind her.  
  
"D'argo," Aeryn said without turning. It was a simple greeting, warrior to warrior, though few of their battles were fought with weapons these days.  
  
"Aeryn," he returned.  
  
There was tension in the air, a purpose to the Luxan's stride. Maybe he thought she was blind to the shifting moods around her, the flagging resolve of her comrades. She paid attention to what was said at mealtimes, even if she had nothing to contribute to the conversation.  
  
"You'll be leaving soon," she said without preamble.  
  
D'argo nodded. The resignation in his voice sounded forced. "There's not much more I can do here. Macton's trail is already cold. The information I acquired on the command carrier is dated. My chances of catching up to him are not going to get any better."  
  
He was lying. Privately she wondered what he had given Scorpius in exchange for information that would help him locate his wife's murderer. She hazarded a guess that it was nothing material. But D'argo didn't need to justify his actions to her. Revenge was a powerful motivator. That she understood.  
  
"You could come with me." D'argo suggested. He was opening a door for her, giving her a chance to escape from the coldness of this room, the solitude of this place. She could take the offer and be the better for it, have a life beyond what was stored in the tank.  
  
"You already know my answer."  
  
He nodded. "Yes, I do. That is why in need to apologize."  
  
She shook her head. "You've done nothing wrong."  
  
"I said I would never abandon an ally."  
  
"Do you still consider me an ally?" she asked.  
  
D'argo took a step towards her. She could feel his heat from where she stood and she was suddenly mindful of how much Luxans hated the cold.and how he endured it for her without complaint.  
  
"Not just an ally.but a friend."  
  
She hated her voice for betraying her. "If I hadn't made the choices I made, if I hadn't come back, John would still be alive."  
  
D'argo seemed to consider his next words carefully. "Aeryn.that wasn't the life that John wanted."  
  
She realized he hadn't told her she was wrong.  
  
"Will you be coming back?" she asked.  
  
"I do not know."  
  
She understood that too.  
  
Aeryn could see D'argo's reflection in the storage tank. His expression was pained. He moved to stand beside her, placed a hand flat against the exterior of the liquid-filled incubation chamber. The infant inside was so tiny, so fragile-looking.  
  
"She's beautiful," he told her.  
  
"I know." It was almost pride. Mostly pain, but almost pride.  
  
Only a thin layer of glass separated her from the baby, but it would still be six monens until the artificial gestation was complete. Six monens before she was allowed any physical contact with her child, before she could hold her own baby.John's baby.in her arms.  
  
The Diagnosan had needed no assistant to translate for him. *Cannot.replace.*  
  
The child that she and John had conceived could not survive inside her womb. Whether a result of the Scarrans' butchery or Scorpius' inexpert patch job, the result was the same: Aeryn Sun would never bear a child again.  
  
She didn't realize she was stroking the glass until D'argo said, "Aeryn.I'm sorry."  
  
Apologies, sympathy, regret.they didn't change what was in the past and only made the future seem that much less bearable. "So am I."  
  
"I should go. I have a long distance to travel and not much time to cover it," D'argo said softly.  
  
Aeryn nodded. "We all do what we need to, D'argo."  
  
The Luxan took in a breath. His next words were weighed down with sadness, drowning any other emotion his voice may have carried. "No, we don't. We do what we want. We do what we think is best for ourselves at the time. Very seldom does it have anything to do with necessity."  
  
He turned to go.  
  
"D'argo."  
  
She heard him stop, turn.  
  
D'argo had told her once before that he understood why she'd brought Scorpius to Crichton. She'd thrown his compassion back in his face; told him he didn't know anything.  
  
Oh, he knew. He'd been right. She'd been wrong, and Aeryn owed him the dignity of admitting as much.  
  
She turned to face him, but found herself alone.  
  
D'argo might be John's echo, but unlike the human, he always knew the right time to leave.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
There was another time, a different day, though all days were a cold, blue blur, each one melting into the next with hardly a pause for food or sleep. D'argo had been a weeken gone, maybe more. She had been convinced that Rygel and Chiana had gone with him until she caught a fleeting glimpse of gray skin in one of the corridors. Aeryn felt no compulsion to speak to the Nebari. Like everything else, it all came back to John.  
  
Chiana had a brother. Crichton had helped her forget that he was so far away.or maybe he'd helped her remember.  
  
For an instant she was back on that planet, with Braca and his men in that hotel corridor and Chiana hunched protectively over an injured Crichton. Too close, but then she'd always had a preference for everyone else's personal space.  
  
Maybe he hadn't reminded her of her brother at all.  
  
Aeryn heard footsteps; slow and deliberate, almost a warning. It must have been late in the solar day. She had only the stiffness in her muscles to tell her how long she'd been standing. She'd been hungry at one point but her stomach had long since stopped complaining when it realized she wasn't listening.  
  
She put a face to the footsteps before he even entered the room.  
  
"Remarkable," was the hybrid's only greeting. The word soured the air, cheapened all that she had endured to bring them to this place.  
  
She was reminded that her child, too, was a hybrid.  
  
"What do you want, Scorpius?"  
  
"From you? Nothing."  
  
Scorpius sauntered into the room and came to stand beside her. Too close. The half-Scarren had no concept of personal space. His breath had no particular odor, but it was hot on her shoulder.  
  
"Your child.I see now why the Scarrans were interested in-"  
  
She didn't let him finish. The storage tank trembled violently as Aeryn forced the hybrid up against it, one hand on his throat, one knee in his ribs. Her voice was so low that it was almost eclipsed by the gentle hum of electrical equipment. "If you harm my child in any way I will kill you with my bare hands or I will die trying."  
  
"I believe you would," Scorpius replied calmly. He made no physical response to her attack. He didn't have to. Aeryn wasn't stupid. The hybrid's strength was legendary. He could have finished her right then and there. "However.physical violence would not serve either one of us in this situation."  
  
Scorpius extricated himself from her grip.  
  
"Our agreement-" she began.  
  
"Was the life of your child for John Crichton, for the wormhole knowledge locked in his brain."  
  
She said nothing.  
  
Scorpius continued, "Rest assured, Officer Sun, I would never harm your child." He straightened the shoulders of his coolant suit where they had bunched up during Aeryn's assault. "As I was saying: I now understand the Scarrans' interest in this child."  
  
Aeryn detached herself from the emotion of the subject. "Breeding stock. She can regulate thermal increases."  
  
"Oh, much more than that." Scorpius ran a gloved hand over the tank's surface. The infant's eyes were closed. The Diagnosan had said she was unaware of anything beyond her liquid environment, but she chose that moment to twitch and Aeryn felt somehow violated. "Human body temperature is higher than Sebacean, high enough to induce heat delirium. Your child's DNA contains the formula responsible for this, and that formula is compatible with Sebacean genetics."  
  
It would have had to be.  
  
"I'm not a scientist," she told him.  
  
"If the Scarrans had found a way to duplicate that pattern.they would have been able to modify it.and use it against the Peacekeepers."  
  
"A contagion to induce heat delirium in Sebaceans." She shook her head. "Hundreds already exist. What would the Scarrans need with one more?"  
  
"Not a contagion, but a slight alteration of the subject's DNA. Completely compatible, totally undetectable.and absolutely fatal. Not a disease, not a contagion, but a perfect biological weapon all the same."  
  
She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature. "How much information did the Scarrans get?"  
  
"My.operative on Besh reported that the Scarran who held your child had not yet uncovered this information before he met with his untimely demise. As for the dreadnought.I know as much as you do."  
  
John had destroyed a dreadnought.  
  
Her John.  
  
*You're just like him. I mean, you are him.*  
  
Scorpius continued, ".but I suspect that without a viable subject, they will run into a number of complications, even with the information that they garnered from preliminary scans."  
  
Aeryn returned her attention to her child, her priority. When she spoke, her voice was a dead thing, wrung out and beaten. "Are you finished?"  
  
Scorpius made her wait a few microts before he answered her. Command must have suited him. The half-breed did things in his own time and by his own rules, and enjoyed it far too much. "That is not all I came here to tell you. There has been.a new development."  
  
And there was too much hope there. Even this demon had a share.  
  
She hated that her hands were trembling but she couldn't help it. She pressed her lips together, knew her voice would shake, but let the words escape anyway, "Is it.?"  
  
Scorpius lifted his chin. So arrogant. She hated him for it, hated him for holding back what she needed to hear. "If you would accompany me, Officer Sun, it would be much easier to show you what I mean."  
  
She was aware only that it took too long to get to the door. When she did, Scorpius called to her. "One more thing, Officer Sun."  
  
He sounded almost sorry, and she didn't want to think about why that was. "The child's ability to regulate thermal increases would not have extended to you. If Crichton's child had been allowed to come to term naturally."  
  
"It would have induced the Living Death," she finished for him.  
  
"You knew, then."  
  
She didn't answer, and barely paused at the door to address him. "If you have something to show me, then do it."  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Long corridors, white and endless. Only a fraction of the base was visible from the planet's surface. If Aeryn began walking now she would not have passed through every room until long after her child was born. The research base was old, its design similar to schematics she had seen of early Peacekeeper research facilities, pre-Gammak base. She would have suspected that it had been part of a Sebacean colony at one point except that the doors were twice as wide and half again as tall as they needed to be to accommodate members of her species. The written language on every control panel was angular, sharp and alien.  
  
"Igosites," Scorpius informed her. He must have noticed her looking at the walls. She'd never asked before, not even when he'd brought them to this base.  
  
"I've never heard of them," she replied flatly.  
  
"And it is unlikely that you ever will."  
  
She noticed it then, the faint, stale scent of something long since dead and burned. And she understood Scorpius' meaning. She'd handled enough acid concussion bombs early in her Peacekeeper training that the lingering stench was like an old friend.  
  
It wasn't a research base. It was a tomb.  
  
Scorpius led on.  
  
Aeryn's heart sank further and further as they drew closer to their destination. She never would have found the room on her own. All this time, the last monen she had known it was there. That was enough. Actively seeking it out would have been like prodding an infected wound.  
  
The tall door slid open before they reached it and a slight, disheveled figure shambled into the hallway. Chiana's hair was pressed flat on one side, as if she'd been sleeping on it, but the dark gray bruises under her eyes told a different story. The top two fasteners on her corset were undone. The gash on her cheek had healed well, leaving behind only a thin blue scar, which she rubbed absently as if it pained her. The young Nebari looked from Scorpius to Aeryn, her mouth open slightly. Her expression was unreadable, and her black eyes empty. She pushed past them without a word.  
  
Aeryn Sun had spent much of the last monen huddled in a cold room with her unborn child. It suddenly struck her that Chiana must have spent that last monen here. There was no anger or annoyance behind the thought, only a quiet acceptance of something she had known but never before acknowledged.  
  
Aeryn preceded Scorpius into the chamber. It was brighter here, the illumination nearly double what it was in the corridor. The room was bigger than she had expected it to be. The walls were metal, but not the dull, bluish metal she'd become accustomed to seeing throughout the base. They shone like frosted mirrors. She watched her reflection glide across the chamber, a diseased blotch of black crawling across the sterile interior of the operating theatre that doubled as a storage space.  
  
The casket was much like her own had been, like the one in which Jool had been imprisoned: a tube of metal with a single transparent window. The edges if the window were frosted with a frozen crust of vapor, a frame for the smooth, pale features of John Crichton.  
  
In death, as in sleep, he looked so very young.  
  
Scorpius' presence melted into the background until it was just the two of them.  
  
One hundred eighty microts. She'd never forgotten the timetable he gave her to work with in the Flax.  
  
One hundred eighty microts.  
  
Ragel's body, lying in a forgotten heap just out of sight.  
  
Aeryn squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head slightly to deny the memory.  
  
The Luxan's hands were covered in blood. Red. Bright. Human. With those gory appendages he pulled her shaking body into an embrace.  
  
She could still see through the tears.  
  
No.  
  
D'argo mumbled words of apology into her hair, words that meant nothing, solved nothing, made her feel so useless: *He's gone, Aeryn. He's gone.*  
  
Aeryn's hand came to rest on the hard surface of the casket. The metal was so cold that it almost burned the skin of her palm. A hard, gray surface, just like the deck of that hangar.  
  
There had been screaming.  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"NO!"  
  
D'argo stumbled backward as she erupted from his embrace, skinning her knees on the hangar floor as she dropped down beside John's corpse.  
  
Still warm.  
  
John was still warm. Eyes open and empty. She refused to close them this time. Blood oozed from his belly, dripping lazily over the human's limp, pale hand. Aeryn brushed the appendage to the side. It flopped on the deck, useless, a thing discarded.  
  
Her shaking hands crawled up his ribs, tracing the curve of bone to the spot he'd shown her. She'd done this before. It was like a field resourcefulness exercise. Her body remembered the motion, the resistance of muscle, bone and cartilage to the pressure of her hands. His lips were still warm against hers.  
  
Breathe.  
  
Aeryn couldn't hear the pounding of footsteps over the rush of air as she refilled her lungs. Suddenly there were hands on her shoulders; gloved, black hands that she would have twisted and broken if they had belonged to anyone other than Scorpius.  
  
The half-breed's face was a mask of anger and horror. He took in the dead officer, the discarded pulse weapons and Crichton's lifeless body. A feral snarl curled his lip.  
  
Aeryn was thrown aside in the half-breed's haste to get to the human's side. She landed heavily on her hip, sending a jolt of pain through her already abused muscles. She heard scuffling. A few motras away D'argo had an arm wrapped around Chiana's waist. She struggled. The young Nebari had eyes only for Crichton: wide, horror-stricken eyes. Her gray lips moved but no sound escaped.  
  
She caught sight of Rygel. The little Dominar hovered in the background, solemn. The Hynerian caught her eye and lowered his head respectfully.  
  
They had given up.  
  
Aeryn picked herself up and charged Scorpius. "There is still time!" She shouted. "We have one hundred and eighty microts before his brain is irreparably damaged."  
  
Scorpius allowed himself to be pushed aside. There was no other explanation.  
  
Her voice was too desperate, her eyes too wild. D'argo and Rygel were regarding her too calmly, their faces strained with grief.  
  
"Aeryn." D'argo began softly.  
  
"Frell you, then," she responded coldly. She positioned herself between Scorpius and John, pressed her lips to John's and breathed for him.  
  
The kiss was salty.  
  
Crichton's chest rose and fell. The only sound was the breath escaping from his lungs and it seemed to reverberate throughout the hangar.  
  
Scorpius was calm to the point that the whole situation seemed even more unreal. "Ka D'argo, prime your ship for takeoff immediately."  
  
D'argo didn't move. Anger flared in her. But Scorpius spoke first, reasonably. "Ka D'argo, there is a chance that we can save John's life, but we must move quickly."  
  
D'argo's eyes traveled from John's pale, still form up to Scorpius. When the clone had reached the height of its strength, when he'd been desperate for relief from that abomination he'd pleaded with D'argo to kill him. Aeryn had missed out on that conversation. She'd missed out on too much of this man's life. And the times she'd been there, she hadn't really *been* there.  
  
Back then John would rather have died than fall into Scorpius' hands. Whether he did or not today was up to D'argo. If John died, Aeryn's child was in jeopardy as well. The Luxan might understand about the baby. He had a child of his own, but when it came right down to it the wishes of his friend meant more to him than a nameless infant.  
  
"Just do it, D'argo," she begged. "Please."  
  
Compassion was his weakness. The Luxan didn't turn her down.  
  
One hundred eighty microts.  
  
In D'argo's ship they were able to reach the city's surgical facility in half that time. There were occasions where Rygel's negotiating skills were invaluable. Then there were other times when a charged pulse rifle and a fistful of currency would do just as well. This occasion was of the latter variety.  
  
Scorpius carried John's body as if it were weightless, a testament to the unnatural power and endurance contained within the half-Scarran. It was something they had often underestimated.  
  
The Diagnosan had no assistant to translate for him, so Scorpius filled that role as well. Having the half-breed as a buffer between her and the Diagnosan's greedy, cold logic turned out to be for the best. The price was high, but Scorpius didn't negotiate. However, it didn't take long for them to discover that no amount of currency could make the impossible possible. Aeryn no longer had any questions at the difference between human and Sebacean anatomy. The same type of pulse blast that had killed Gilina in a matter of arns had done the same to Crichton in a matter of microts. Most of his damaged organs were beyond repair.  
  
Aeryn knew before Scorpius made the translation that there were no compatible donors on file.  
  
A suspension capsule was their last option. It was Rygel who reminded them.  
  
Aeryn hadn't been there to witness the exchange of currency that convinced the Diagnosan to abandon his patients, his practice, and the Peacekeepers' payroll for the company of a weary, pathetic group of renegades. She returned to the hangar to retrieve her prowler and came back in John's module instead.  
  
No one argued her selection.  
  
The planet's red sun was just beginning to break over the horizon when they departed the medical facility. From the cockpit of John's module Aeryn could see metras of wilderness beyond the boundaries of the city. As she climbed, a body of water appeared below her. A long bridge bisected it. The sky was clear.  
  
*Earth.minus the sunshine.*  
  
Aeryn kept her eyes locked on the instrument panel until she broke orbit.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Now, a monen later, Aeryn Sun found her hand unconsciously tracing John's features on the foggy plate of glass. A shadow loomed behind her. She stiffened under Scorpius' gaze like a cadet up for review.  
  
"Why did you bring me here?" Aeryn asked coldly. Her hand still hovered protectively over the casket.  
  
The voice that responded did not belong to Scorpius, nor was the hybrid in evidence. Instead a bent old alien hovered behind her. The man's physical dimensions were vaguely Sebacean, but there the resemblance to her species ended. Two yellow eyes set in a pitch-black, angular countenance took in John's coffin. The alienness of his features concealed his expression.  
  
"What is it you want?" Aeryn asked bluntly.  
  
The old man appeared not to hear her, instead he moved around to the other side of John's casket, all the while keeping his eyes on the human. "Interesting.but not Sebacean, is he? Hmm. Amazing how a species can appear so much like your kind on the outside, but inside.so very different." He seemed to be speaking more for his own benefit than for hers.  
  
"I know you. Gistae, is it?"  
  
He continued as if she had not spoken, ".and yet, Peacekeeper, the two of you were alike enough to produce healthy offspring."  
  
She studied him. "You're one of Scorpius' operatives."  
  
He did not respond. Aeryn was beginning to think he had difficulty hearing, but he looked up at her next word.  
  
"Beshish?"  
  
His lips parted to reveal a double row of sharp, blue teeth.  
  
"I understand that I have you to thank for rescuing my child from the Scarrans."  
  
"You won't thank me." He stated. "You're a Peacekeeper."  
  
It stung a little, but the truth always cut more deeply than any lie.  
  
"You're a healer," she said.  
  
"*Was* a healer," he replied. Then he was staring at her with his bright, lidless yellow eyes. "Officer Sun. Should I call you 'Aeryn'?"  
  
"You can call me what you like." She bit off the words too quickly. She had no energy, no motivation left for courtesy. She hadn't for a very long time.  
  
Gistae angled his head slightly, scrutinizing her. She could not tell whether or not she had succeeded in offending him. She still wasn't sure if that was what she'd been trying to do.  
  
"Why are you here?" she demanded.  
  
"You wish him to live."  
  
The sentence was a question, not an answer.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"He is your mate?"  
  
"No."  
  
Gistae's eyes lingered on her for an instant longer then fell to rest on John's pale features.  
  
"Scorpius has told me that this man is very important, but he could not tell me why."  
  
She said nothing. He could be trying to bait her. Everyone had their own agenda, and the fewer people who knew about the precious knowledge locked in John's brain the better.  
  
*We do what we think is best for ourselves.*  
  
Gistae spoke again, "Members of my race possess certain.adaptive capabilities."  
  
Aeryn watched Gistae warily, unsure where this conversation was headed.  
  
"Our world is unstable, hostile. My species evolve rapidly, sometimes as quickly as a single generation. Over time some of us developed the ability to consciously alter our own physiology."  
  
"Should this mean something to me?"  
  
"It means something to him." Gistae indicated the coffin. "Beshish can change the shape, size and chemical composition of our internal organs."  
  
Aeryn frowned.  
  
"It is a most useful trait.in the rare instance that a compatible organ donor is unavailable." Gistae said.  
  
Grim understanding washed over her.  
  
He was so calm.  
  
She knew what John would say. She knew how he would react: with horror, even disgust. Back in Tocot's surgical facility he had insisted that no harm come to any of the donors, even at the cost of his own sanity.  
  
Aeryn felt no compulsion to react the way John would have.  
  
"Is Scorpius making you do this?" she asked.  
  
The old Beshish was looking down at the casket. "I am old. I owe Scorpius more than I can ever repay. This is a service I will render without hesitation. If Scorpius says that the life of John Crichton is worth relinquishing my own, I do not doubt him."  
  
"Then why did it take so long to render it?" The words were out of her mouth before she had time to consider them.  
  
For a moment Gistae regarded her without speaking. If she had angered him, his expression betrayed did not betray it.  
  
"It took me this long to alter my organs to suit the human's needs," he said finally. "For many weekens I was unsure whether or not I would be completely successful."  
  
She did not know what to say.  
  
The old Beshish crossed to the door.  
  
"Gistae," Aeryn called to him. "Thank you."  
  
She saw his reflection pause, saw his head tilt ever so slightly, as if she were a puzzle he could not solve. After a moment he nodded in mute acceptance.  
  
When he left her the chamber seemed a little colder than before.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Breathe.  
  
Just breathe.  
  
The air was thicker than he remembered. It was a struggle for his weakened lungs too expand. He was so cold and wanted to curl in on himself, except that his limbs were full of sand and too heavy to move.  
  
He lay still.  
  
There was a voice in his ear and its owner dealt a stinging slap to his cheek, then another. Cold air only sharpened the sting.  
  
"Breathe," she commanded.  
  
And he did. An oxygen mask was lifted from his nose and mouth. The chill of the air in his unprepared lungs caught him off guard. He choked on it, and coughed until the mask was replaced.  
  
So cold, so tired.his bones were made of ice. His body might just as easily have belonged to someone else for its total lack of response.  
  
"That's it. That's right."  
  
Motion on his right. The air was swimming with stars. His eyelids were at half-mast, though he didn't remember opening them at all.  
  
Blur of dark clothing.  
  
The mask disappeared again. A light slap on his cheek. Right, breathe. She wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Breathing hurt, but he didn't complain. He knew better.  
  
His brain idly registered that he was lying down, but that he was not the bed's only occupant. Her head was tucked under his chin, silky stands of hair tickling his nose.  
  
Time passed, he wasn't sure how much. He was aware of a shifting as she sat up, and a face very close to his own.  
  
He smiled at her weakly, and she returned it despite the tears on her cheeks.  
  
"Hey," he whispered hoarsely.  
  
"Hey, Old Man."  
  
And a gloved hand closed around his.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Aeryn kept her promise. By the time Crichton awoke, she and the baby were gone.  
  
His memories immediately following his resurrection were scattered and hazy. Faces mostly: Chiana, Rygel and Scorpy, the half-breed looked as nervous and fidgety as Crichton had ever seen him. Scorpius must have damn near crapped his cooling suit when he found out what G.I. Ragel had done to his favorite human. As for the incident that had brought him here, Crichton actually remembered very little.  
  
There was a Diagnosan, too: Tocot's evil twin, green suit instead of red. Same chirpy voice.  
  
The role of Grunshlck in tonight's performance will be played by Scorpius.  
  
The hybrid translated the Diagnosan's words too well. Fatal pulse weapon wound. Refrigerated coffin. The highlights were enough to turn his skin a shade closer to Hynerian. Stomach, liver, and a motra of intestine.Crichton held up a hand to stop him. The transplants that had started in Tocot's surgery over a cycle ago with an innocent bit of cerebral fluid now composed a significant portion of his anatomy. He didn't want to know exactly what percentage of his body was no longer human. He also didn't want to hear about the walking talking organ donor.  
  
Gistae, meet John.  
  
He finally found his voice enough to croak, "Aeryn."  
  
Scorpius gave him a considering look. Perhaps it wasn't the first time he'd asked, but it was the first time he was coherent enough to recall the answer.  
  
"It is my understanding that Officer Sun and your child are safe, John.and far away from here." The half-breed lowered himself onto the edge of Crichton's bed. "At your request, I believe."  
  
It was strange.  
  
He felt.nothing.  
  
Empty, cold.like a part of him had been removed which no Diagnosan could replace. Unlike an amputation, there was no phantom pain. Just.nothing.  
  
"How long?" Crichton barely understood himself. Luckily Scorpius' ears were sharper.  
  
"Six solar days."  
  
His lips slowly remembered how to form words. "Want proof.she's okay."  
  
Scorpius hesitated, but just barely, before replying, "Officer Sun left no indication of her vector or destination.also, I believe, at your request. At present the best I can offer is the testimony of your shipmates.as well as my own assurances that she was not hindered in any way." The mattress shifted slightly as Scorpius lowered himself onto the edge of Crichton's bed.  
  
"However," Scorpius continued, "I am certain that the proof you desire could be easily obtained.were I to go through the proper channels."  
  
Crichton suddenly found himself bolt upright with a hand wrapped around Scorpius' throat. The corners of his vision darkened at the sudden movement but he didn't let go.  
  
"You stay the hell away from her," Crichton hissed.  
  
Scorpius smiled calmly. His hand became an unwelcome weight on Crichton's shoulder. "I was merely pointing out that it is never difficult to locate someone.who wishes to be found."  
  
Scorpius stood. His eyes burned blue with wormholes.  
  
"When you're feeling better, John.we will talk," Scorpius assured him. "I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. Together we will accomplish much."  
  
The half-Scarran smiled at him and Crichton wished for death.  
  
His or Scorpius'.  
  
Either would do.  
  
Chiana and Rygel hovered in the doorway, oblivious as Scorpius brushed past them. The half-breed had become that much of a staple in their lives.  
  
Then there was a gray mouth covering his own. Chiana was Lips where Aeryn would have been Tongue, but she was no less passionate for it. Crichton raised his hand to trace the thin scar on her cheek and she leaned into his touch like a kitten.  
  
Sparky didn't kiss him. Instead the Hynerian inherited the unenviable job of relating the highlights of the last monen.  
  
He had only a vague recollection of the pulse-blast that had killed him. Everything after the Qatrac had the hazy quality of a night of heavy drinking. Thank God for small favors.  
  
D'argo was gone. Crichton tried to be happy about that. No doubt Macton would find himself in the Luxan's shadow very soon, and D'argo would be able to get some closure on that particular chapter in his life.  
  
Crichton tried hard not to think about the closure that he had denied himself.  
  
His daughter in a liquid storage tank.  
  
Aeryn and the baby gone.  
  
He was tired. Not everything was making sense. It didn't take long before the hands of sleep reached up and dragged him down, taking him away from the aching heaviness of his broken body. The air was warm here, and gentle. It washed over his skin in soft gusts.  
  
He dreamed of Earth and Aeryn, a beach and a baby taking her first, awkward steps, toddling toward her father's waiting arms.  
  
He woke before she made it.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
"And you complain about food cubes." Harvey said, poking at a wobbly rectangle of green Jell-O with a plastic spoon.  
  
The neural clone was propped up in a hospital bed, swathed in a green paper gown and picking at the thoroughly unappetizing contents of a plastic tray.  
  
Crichton groaned and tried unsuccessfully to sink into his own mattress and hide from the neural clone. The stiff material was anything but accommodating.  
  
Harvey had been not so subtly trying to draw Crichton into a conversation since he was coherent enough to have one. Three days so far. Three days of Harvey knocking at the door of his subconscious, dredging up memories of hospital waiting rooms and antiseptic-smelling halls. Nurses in comfortable shoes. Syringes and cotton swabs.  
  
Then Harvey decided to get creative.  
  
The hospital gown was a nice touch.  
  
"Drafty," Harvey commented when he noticed the exposed back. Thankfully he opted to stay in bed, thereby sparing Crichton the horror of his bare backside.  
  
Crichton wasn't biting and the neural clone wasn't letting up. Harvey might very well have some interesting points to make about his current predicament, but Crichton was in no mood. He had a sinking feeling that it wouldn't be long before he was treated to Harvey's rendition of "Ninety- nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall".  
  
Crichton shut his eyes and half-heartedly prayed for a cardiac episode.  
  
"John, I live inside your mind and yet I fear I will never understand you."  
  
All right. He'd bite. "What's not to understand, Harv?"  
  
"Even when you get what you want, you are not satisfied." Harvey resumed his ineffectual stabbing of the Jell-O. "You have a clear destiny, a clear goal: wormholes."  
  
"Yeah, same as Scorpius."  
  
Harvey shook his head in exasperation. "Scorpius is no longer affiliated with the Peacekeepers. No one in this galaxy has a greater knowledge of wormholes.besides yourself of course."  
  
"And the Ancients.possibly the Pathfinders." Crichton continued in monotone.  
  
"From a completely objective standpoint, John, I believe it is in our best interest to collaborate with Scorpius. Why do you hesitate?"  
  
"I'll hold up my end of the deal."  
  
Harvey snorted, "For how long? You forget that I live inside your mind, John. You may fool the others.but not me. You don't want wormhole technology in Scorpius' hands any more than Scorpius wants it in the hands of the Scarrans. You believe that he will misuse the wormhole technology."  
  
"Wouldn't be hard." Crichton paused. "These equations.in my head. I don't know everything but I know what it can do. It's dangerous. Evil."  
  
"Knowledge itself is not evil, John."  
  
"Yeah.it's the application I worry about."  
  
Harvey swung his legs over the side of his hospital bed. Crichton didn't bother to hide his relief that the neural clone was wearing his coolant suit underneath the gown.  
  
"Consider this, John: you succeeded in destroying Scorpius' wormhole project when you destroyed his command carrier. Part of the reason for your success was that Scorpius' own hesitation to share wormhole technology with anyone outside of a very select group of scientists."  
  
Linfer, smiling as her prowler blossomed into a ball of fire.  
  
Co-Kurra screaming in the Chair.  
  
"More than anyone, Scorpius understands the gravity of this situation," Harvey assured him. "He may be power-hungry, but he would rather die than allow wormhole technology to fall into the wrong hands."  
  
"Are you saying that Scorpius' hands are the right hands?"  
  
Harvey shook his head, frustrated. "Good and evil, right and wrong; these concepts are a perception based on your own value system. They are only labels, crutches that let you justify your actions so that you can sleep at night."  
  
Funny, Crichton thought. He hadn't slept well in a very long time.  
  
"Good and evil do not exist, John. There is only you and I.and them. Do what is best for yourself, John.for us."  
  
Crichton took a deep breath. "And I suppose you're going to tell me what that is?"  
  
"I have long since given up believing that you will heed my advice, but.if you insist.Right now what is best includes sharing the wormhole information with Scorpius. I have no doubt that he will use it to do exactly what he says: defeat the Scarrans, and that would be a benefit to all species.yours included."  
  
That was an image he didn't need: the Scarrans on earth.  
  
Crichton said ironically, "So, he's a butcher but at least he's honest. And once the Scarrans are out of the picture, what do you think he'll do?"  
  
"Scorpius' greatest motivator has always been revenge."  
  
"Grayza? Peacekeepers? Where does it end?"  
  
"I believe that decision.would be yours."  
  
Gammak base, shadow depository, command carrier. How hard would it be to add one mutant half-breed genius to the list?  
  
The question then became, would it come to that?  
  
Considering their history, it shouldn't have been a difficult question to answer, but it was.  
  
"He let Aeryn go." Crichton found himself saying.  
  
"Of course he let her go, John," Harvey informed him. "Scorpius doesn't need Aeryn.and he doesn't need your daughter either." Crichton frowned and realized he needn't have bothered. Harvey knew the direction of his thoughts. One benefit of having another personality grafted to your own. "Your relationships are your undoing. Your fragile psyche cannot survive without them, and yet I fear they will be the death of us. Do you think that Scorpius freely gave Macton's whereabouts to D'argo? Do you think that Chiana's reunion with her brother came without a price?"  
  
The memory was fresh. Harvey knew just how to prod an open wound.  
  
Chiana hadn't said goodbye.Not with words, anyway.  
  
She had spent her last night at the base curled by his side, her head tucked under his chin, in that little hollow just below his right shoulder. His left was still too sore to take the weight.  
  
"You love Aeryn," she had told him.  
  
"I always will," he'd replied.  
  
Then he had taken her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Her lips met his, and he showed her that he had always taken her seriously. He tasted like 'now' to her.  
  
Chiana loved him. She told as much. She'd been saying it for a long time, more often than Aeryn ever had, and it never occurred to him to question whether or not she meant it.  
  
She loved him but she left him all the same. Say what you will about Chiana; she knew what was important. She had her priorities in order, and right now John Crichton was not at the top of that particular list.  
  
Nerri  
  
The Nebari Resistance.  
  
He let her go. When he did that, Crichton was finally able to answer the question of whether or not he loved her in return.  
  
Of Moya's crew, that left Rygel and himself. The little Dominar had made it plain why he stayed, and what the price had been. It wasn't Sparky's style to be evasive about these things.  
  
"Power, Crichton: I want it and Scorpius is going to help me get it." Rygel had never lied about his primary objective in life: to wrest his throne from his traitorous cousin Bishan. Now the little Dominar was closer than he'd been in over one hundred cycles. Once the deed was done Scorpius would cash in his favor: money, soldiers and the good graces of the throne of Hyneria. Scorpius planned to have a powerful ally in Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth.  
  
"You're part of it, too," Rygel had told him. Wormholes again. That was why Sparky didn't leave him. Crichton was his meal ticket as much as he was Scorpy's.  
  
"Scarrans first, of course," Rygel had said.  
  
Added to Harvey's words the Hynerian's callous explanation sent a chill down his spine.  
  
"They won't come back." Crichton whispered. "D'argo and Chiana. If they know what's good for them they'll stay away."  
  
"I don't doubt that they will try." Harvey's own brand of sympathy colored the words, harsh and ironic, like his creator. "And they will fail. When it is time for them to return their respective favors.Scorpius will find *them*."  
  
He could change that. If there was one thing he had in spades now, time was it.  
  
"They made their own choices, John. There was nothing you could have done to prevent that.and who is to say they won't be better off for having done so? What is that popular saying that people in your culture disregard so often?"  
  
If you love someone, let them go.  
  
He was getting very good at that.  
  
"Help Scorpius defeat the Scarrans." Harvey told him. "Fear not, John.you will see your friends again."  
  
That was what Crichton was afraid of.  
  
"And Aeryn." he said quietly.  
  
"You know the answer, John," Harvey told him.  
  
Scorpius' words echoed in Crichton's skull, *It is never difficult to locate someone.who wishes to be found.*  
  
Crichton knew it was only a matter of time before he took Scorpius up on that offer.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Epilogue:  
  
Crichton wanted so much to hate this planet.  
  
Kitech, Scorpius had called it.  
  
He wanted it to be ugly and desolate: a wasteland with an atmosphere too acidic to breathe. Scorpius had mentioned a Peacekeeper attack which had long ago destroyed the creatures who built the base on Kitech. Crichton expected burned-out skeletons of buildings. He expected decomposed bodies, charred bones under a black sky, an empty, horrible place to reflect his own dark mood.  
  
It bothered him terribly that this world was so beautiful.  
  
Not beautiful in the way that Earth was. It wasn't beauty born of familiarity. Kitech was beautiful in the same way that Chiana was beautiful to his human eyes: exotic, alien, and completely entrancing. There were no waterfalls, no tall grass, no red-orange sunsets or snow-capped mountains. The sky was purple, painted with the yellow-white light of a young and distant sun. The surface was green and alive in a way that made Crichton think he'd stumbled into the Delvian afterlife.  
  
His first time up to the surface Crichton wondered at the planet's warmth. Such a distant and small sun should have kept the ambient temperature well below freezing. Then he watched as Kitech's second sun broke the horizon and raced across the sky, vanishing below the horizon to appear again four short arns later. The other, the small, white sun did a slow spiral dance, drifting near the horizon from time to time but never disappearing from the heavens.  
  
Crichton had frowned at this world, and it had smiled right back.  
  
After a time, he couldn't help but return the sentiment.  
  
The Igosians built their base underground to avoid detection. They had not succeeded, and the Peacekeepers wrote a bloody end to their story. Crichton wondered if, in their spare time, the Igosians had visited the surface. He wondered if they had laid themselves down on the moss and baked their skin in the warm sunlight, as he was doing now.  
  
Damn shame if they hadn't.  
  
Crichton's wounds were healing well and quickly, the last lingering weakness evaporating underneath Kitech's suns. He was convinced that the fresh air helped, but just try explaining that to Scorpius, who had lived his entire life on spaceships, or Rygel, who couldn't understand why any kind of outdoor activity would be desirable.  
  
When he wasn't hashing out wormhole theory with Scorpius, Crichton was wandering the surface, recovering the endurance he had lost to the Karatonga plague. He walked. He hiked. He climbed. For the first time in almost three and a half years, he had a suntan.  
  
Scorpius didn't seem to mind the human's frequent trips to the surface, especially when the scent of fresh air always seemed to herald new ideas. Wormholes, A to Z. It was all there. Crichton's skin was clean of equations now. No need to write down things that were etched deeper than any pen could ever go.  
  
There were no wormholes on his mind today. They were an obsession, yes, but he found it was easier to let Scorpius do the obsessing. For his part Crichton had learned to stay still and let the knowledge come to him. And it was, slowly but surely.  
  
His daughter must have been born by now. He liked to think that she was out there somewhere cradled in her mother's arms, getting her first look at the sky, the stars. Maybe Aeryn was pointing them out to her: Huey, Dewey, Louie... Maybe she gave them names of her own. Maybe she pointed out 'Aeryn' but instead told his daughter 'John'.  
  
Crichton wanted to look up and find 'Aeryn', to single her out from all the other stars in the sky.  
  
But there was too much light here, and he couldn't see the stars.  
  
He returned his attention to his immediate surroundings as he heard footsteps in the underbrush, soft and growing softer as they approached.  
  
Crichton tensed.  
  
Except for the gentle rustling of the breeze in the underbrush there was only silence.  
  
A heavy weight suddenly landed squarely on his torso and it was all Crichton could do not to bring up his lunch. He rolled to the side, a defensive reflex that dumped the squirming weight onto the mossy ground, where it retreated a bit, hissing.  
  
Crichton rubbed his stomach.  
  
And grinned.  
  
After a moment the small, pitch-black figure followed suit, thin lips curving into an awkward imitation of Crichton's expression.  
  
Crichton was ready when Clytaeme attacked again, pouncing like a kitten. The feral almost-smile was fixed on her face as her tiny clawed hands went directly for the human's ticklish spots. Crichton struggled to hold the little girl at arm's length, grinning as she fought tooth and nail to reach him.  
  
"I thought I'd find you here," said a gruff voice.  
  
Crichton set the girl down.  
  
"Sparky, my little Chia-pet." He didn't quite have the enthusiasm to back up the greeting. Rygel noticed, and looked a little sadder for it.  
  
"Clytaeme," Clytaeme said enthusiastically, poking her angular head out from behind Crichton's back. She grinned at the little Dominar, displaying a mouth full of pointed blue teeth.  
  
"Gah!" Rygel cringed in disgust. "Why are you playing with that thing? It bites!"  
  
"You should be flattered that someone thinks you taste good."  
  
Clytaeme was staring at the Hynerian with rapt interest, all the while tugging Crichton's arm until he raised it enough for her to slip underneath.  
  
Scorpius valued Clytaeme for the venom in her fangs and Crichton for his knowledge of wormholes. It was the only thing the two of them truly had in common.  
  
There was an odd expression on the Hynerian's face as he watched them, almost like he was seeing the Beshish girl for the first time.  
  
"What is it, Sparky?"  
  
Rygel shook his head and seemed to come back to himself. "I think you'd better come and have a look."  
  
Crichton frowned but climbed to his feet. He scooped up Clytaeme automatically, balancing her negligible weight on his hip, and followed the Hynerian into the underground base.  
  
Rygel led him to the operations room, a relatively small chamber near the surface, the eyes and ears of the base. Scorpius was already there.  
  
"Where's the fire, boss?" Crichton asked.  
  
Scorpius slid out of the way to allow him an unobstructed view of the vid- screen. The visual sensors were pointed skyward.  
  
There she was, silhouetted against a field of stars.  
  
Moya.  
  
Oh, God.  
  
She was okay. Moya was okay. At least from here she looked none the worse for wear for being sucked down a wormhole. Relief flooded through him, followed closely by a much darker emotion. Before he could identify it, Crichton felt his face begin to burn.  
  
"You son of a bitch. You lured them here," he accused Scorpius coldly.  
  
Clytaeme's small body stiffened in his arms and Crichton set her down.  
  
"An incorrect assumption, John," Scorpius responded evenly. "Like yourself, I do not wish to attract attention to our.project. The Pilot has been attempting to initiate communication for a quarter-arn.I have not given a response."  
  
Crichton could hear his own heart hammering in his chest.  
  
"How did she find us?"  
  
"In his first transmission the Pilot mentioned that Moya received the information in the form of a coded message.from an operative in the Nebari Resistence."  
  
Chiana.  
  
"I don't want to drag Moya into this," Crichton heard himself say.  
  
"If she didn't want in, she wouldn't have come," Rygel said bitterly.  
  
"Shut up, Sparky." But he couldn't deny the truth in the Hynerian's words.  
  
"John," Scorpius almost looked exasperated by the exchange. "I have no wish to endanger the Leviathan. I have no need. If you do not wish her to become involved.then do not respond. The Leviathan's sensors cannot penetrate this base. It is unlikely that they will discover us even if they were to send someone in a transport pod."  
  
Jool.  
  
The Old Woman.  
  
"Just ignore them and hope they'll go away." Crichton hated that there was defeat in his tone.  
  
"Before they attract attention.if they haven't already," Rygel said.  
  
He kept his eyes on the floor as he said, "Is Pilot still on the horn?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Let me hear him."  
  
Pilot's voice came through and Crichton found himself covering his eyes, massaging away an imaginary headache. Damn sunlight was too bright. Yeah, the damn sunlight.  
  
".ommander Crichton.Dominar Rygel.Can you hear me? Please respond." Crichton listened, feeling a steady pressure build behind his ribs. "Moya and I eagerly await your transmission."  
  
Rygel was looking at him  
  
It was so easy. Say nothing. Let her go. Let her get on with her life.away from Scorpius, away from the Peacekeepers, away from him. It was for the best.  
  
But was it what she wanted?  
  
"Commander?" Pilot inquired. "We are most fulfilled when serving others. Moya and I wish to express that you will always be welcome back on board. Please respond."  
  
Crichton took a deep breath and made his choice.  
  
*Your relationships are your undoing.I fear they will be the death of us.*  
  
There are worse ways to go, Harvey.  
  
Crichton opened a channel.  
  
"Hey, Pilot. It's good to hear your voice."  
  
  
  
*End* 


End file.
